Another Way to Treat Depression

Neurofeedback -- which has been around for decades -- can have dramatic effects, at least it has for me and others I know. Why has this approach to treating depression been such a well-kept secret?

I am sitting at my dining room table wearing what looks like an old lady’s bathing cap, only this one has a battery pack, wires and electrodes!

It may look really weird, but lately this device has become my best friend. It is a safe but very powerful device that helps me keep depression at bay. While I wear it, I am doing something called neurofeedback, a technique for treating depression that has been around for decades.

The thing I can’t figure out — and I have asked numerous experts — is why did I have to wait until I was in my seventies to discover it? How come neurofeedback is such a well-kept secret? Like so many millions of others, I thought the principle way to treat depression was chemical, that is, to take oodles of anti-depressants.

Before I go further I have to explain that my younger sister was the one who first introduced me to the idea of neurofeedback. She started working with a neurofeedback practitioner in Hadley, Massachusetts last June and pretty soon she reported to me that her mood had lifted in a way that she had never experienced before. She wasn’t giddy; she simply felt like she had a buoyant new energy.

“I’m awfully glad I found it,” she says.

I grew a lot more interested in neurofeedback after the election last November, when, like millions and millions of other Americans, I felt like I had rolled off a cliff into a deep dark morass of fear, depression and terror at what was to come.

Meanwhile, a week later, my husband realized that he needed major back surgery. That too had me tied up in knots. The combination was deadly, or so it felt in November.

I talked to my therapist and she mentioned that she had a client who was having remarkable results with neurofeedback.

“He’s tried everything,” Maureen told me, “including ketamine and nothing worked for him before, until this!”

That was enough for me. I quickly called the neurofeedback practitioners that her client was seeing in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. By some miracle, I was able to get an appointment right away.

OK, this next part might strike you as impossible. But I swear it’s the truth: after a couple of intake discussions by phone, I had my first neurofeedback session in Pittsfield on December 10th with family therapist Margaret Dondiego, who is board certified in neurofeedback. I had two sessions with her the following week, on December 17th and 19th. I skipped a week or so for the holidays and had my fourth session on January 2, 2025, just a few days before my husband and I left for Colorado.

By that point, I was feeling a dramatic improvement in my mood. Moreover, as I explained to Margaret, I was feeling more calm and resilient than I had in a very long time.

How is it possible that four sessions could have such an impact?

The short answer is that neurofeedback builds on the brain’s inherent “neuroplasticity,” its natural ability to change, and it leads the brain to function more calmly and effectively. As one website explains, neurofeedback is a safe and non-invasive technique that enables you to alter your own brain wave characteristics. “You can think of it as exercise for the brain.”

Or as Margaret keeps emphasizing with me, “you are rewiring your brain so that it can better regulate itself.” She adds: “It is, in a certain way, technology-assisted meditation.”

That’s something I can relate to, as I’ve been meditating every morning for years.

Margaret’s instructions to me when I first started in her office were very simple. “Try to remain internally calm and externally focused.” Why? Because if you’re not calm and focused, you won’t get the brain reward that neurofeedback delivers.

The field of neurofeedback has been around at least since the 1990s. One of the biggest proponents of the field is psychologist Seburn Fisher, who is based in Northampton, MA. Fisher trains practitioners in neurofeedback all over the world.

Because my husband and I live in Colorado in the winter months, helping to take care of our grandson, I am not able to see Margaret for neurofeedback in her office in Massachusetts. But Margaret helped me acquire (and wire) that silly contraption I have on my head in the photo up top. Outfitted with my weird-looking cap, and an easy-to-use app on my iphone, I can now do neurofeedback wherever I happen to be.

If all this sounds too good to be true, it isn’t.

Stay tuned to find out more. In the next installment I will take you through a session of neurofeedback, explaining how it works. I am still learning, of course, and marveling all the time about what great things it has already done for my mind and brain, and for the minds and brains of others, too.