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Psychiatric neurosurgery in the 21st century: overview and the growth of deep brain stimulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Kenneth Barrett*
Affiliation:
North Staffordshire & Keele University
*
Correspondence to Kenneth Barrett (kenbarrett80@yahoo.com)
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Summary

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Ambulatory deep brain stimulation (DBS) became possible in the late 1980s and was initially used to treat people with movement disorders. Trials of DBS in people with treatment-resistant psychiatric disorder began in the late 1990s, initially focusing on obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder and Tourette syndrome. Despite methodological issues, including small participant numbers and lack of consensus over brain targets, DBS is now being trialled in a wide range of psychiatric conditions. There has also been more modest increase in ablative procedures. This paper reviews these developments in the light of contemporary brain science, considers future directions and discusses why the approach has not been adopted more widely within psychiatry.

Type
Current Practice
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an open-access article published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Authors

Footnotes

Declaration of interest

None.

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