Posted on September 4, 2025

The mapping of the human brain has led to real changes in mental health care, including new ways of targeting care for depression and anxiety. One method growing in use is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS.

Jenna Haybe was 12 years old when she started struggling with her mental health.

"I couldn't really focus on my work," Haybe said. "I could not multitask at all. I just — I was struggling to even watch, like, a movie."

Nothing worked to treat her depression and anxiety throughout her teens.

"I've tried the medications and they may work for a couple weeks, then they stop working," she said.

Now 26, she's trying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

"I figured it's worth a good shot, why not?" she said.

TMS uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in specific areas of the brain related to emotional processing.

She visits Serenity Mental Health Center for the therapy five days a week.

Sarah Awad is a TMS technician with the center. Recently, she demonstrated the treatment Haybe receives with Jillian DiMarco, who also works with the clinic.

"No caffeine this morning? No nicotine?" Awad asked DiMarco.

"Nope," DiMarco said.

"Perfect," Awad said.

DiMarco sits with her hands in her lap, palms facing up.

Something that looks like a shower cap goes on DiMarco’s head. That’s sort of the map for the device that sends the magnetic waves to the brain. It looks like one of those full head hair dryers in a beauty salon.

Tricia Pease, the Serenity Center’s chief operating officer and co-founder, said magnetic stimulation is like a gym workout for the brain.

"Instead of just seeing the neural pathways acting, we can actually interact with them," she said. "So we pulse the magnet towards the neural pathway and it tells that neural pathway to fire. And we just do that rapidly, you know, hundreds of times in a quick, you know, 25-minute session."

Dr. Peter Rosenquist is a professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia.

"The brain is this sort of interconnected series of processing centers," he said.

Rosenquist has been researching TMS for two decades.

When the waves are properly targeted, he said, they can either turn up or turn down functions of the brain.

"And so if you stimulate and excite one region, or with TMS, you can actually use a low-frequency stimulation paradigm and inhibit that region of the brain," Rosenquist said.

He calls the treatment the grandchild of electroshock therapy (ECT), which, he said, is known to be effective, but can cause issues with memory.

"ECT is known for affecting the entire brain," Rosenquist said. "It's hard to aim electrical energy, and so you get seizure and you also get effects that are beneficial and effects that may contribute only to side effects."

Instead of stimulating the whole brain at once, TMS targets certain areas of the brain discreetly with high frequency stimulation, most commonly, the dorsal prefrontal cortex on the left side forehead.

"So, this is an excitatory paradigm that will increase the activity of the neurons in that region, and then, presumably, has downstream effects through the neurocircuitry that underpins what you might say is the cognitive control of emotions," Rosenquist said. "It's clearly an area of ongoing study to fully understand what's happening."

As the therapy session continues at the Atlanta clinic, the technician asks the patient to focus her attention on gratitude.

Pease said positive thinking can ease stress responses.

"Our body is getting healing chemicals when we express gratitude, and we can use that to heal our depression or anxiety or OCD or whatever," she said. "So gratitude is a powerful tool."

Rosenquist’s research supports that idea.

"I think that enhancing the cortical control of emotion is what we're trying to do when we're doing therapy," he said, "trying to encourage cognitive reappraisal of emotional situations."

People like Jenna Haybe are grateful for the opportunity to regain focus and quiet anxiety.

"I don't know how, but somehow it helped," Haybe said. "Now, I'm able to get through a workday and get everything done that I need to get done that day. That’s quite nice."

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Tags: health Mental Health Georgia psychology depression treatment anxiety disorder PTSD