Depression is one of the most difficult to combat mental disorders, which can last from two weeks to years and can have heavy consequences, that interfere with daily living and activities.

For those patients who have tried antidepressants, electroconvulsive therapy or anything else, but haven’t succeeded to defeat it, there is a new medical discovery to be tried. It’s called Deep Brain Stimulation and consists of a quite little surgery through which some electrodes are placed into specific areas of the brain, with the effect of mending malfunctions based on electrical pulses.

This treatment has been used for about 20 years in treating Parkinson disease. After being tested on 16 persons, it was shown that half of the subjects were relieved of depression in a proportion of 50%, during a year. The results are therefore promising.

"This is a new therapy for patients with severe, intractable depression. There's a lot of promise for this approach," said study author Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, quoted by U.S. News & World Report.

The severe form of depression ultimately leads to suicide. 15% of the people who suffer from advanced depression kill themselves. If this new treatment is efficient it will not only improve one’s quality of life, but it will also help to a decrease of the suicide rate.

Another secondary benefic effect that this discovery may have if used is its capacity to diminish the risk of death that exists on depressed persons who have to be operated of astrocytoma (a malignant brain tumor). It has been pointed out that only 15% of the ones who suffered from depression before this surgery have survived after a year.

There haven’t been recorded any side effects of the surgery, only one person among the 16 had a short attack after being operated. Another two persons had a come back of the depressive symptoms when their devices were turned off, but they recovered when these were restarted, according to MedPageToday.

Medtronic is the only company which has its deep brain stimulation devices on market, according to CNN.