UC Davis Health has begun offering SAINT, a five-day accelerated form of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for severe depression, at its Advanced Psychiatric Therapeutics clinic in East Sacramento, the health system announced on Oct. 19. The program gives Sacramento-area patients with treatment-resistant depression a local option for a therapy first developed at Stanford.
The schedule is the biggest practical change. Standard TMS usually requires one session a day for six weeks or more, while SAINT compresses treatment into a single week. That week is intensive, with about 10 hours a day spent in or near the clinic, which can mean time off work and help from a caregiver.
