Clinical trial explores magnetic brain stimulation as drug-free depression treatment for pregnant women

Regan Odysseus was working two full-time jobs—one in an ICU, one as a mother—when her second pregnancy arrived with a familiar weight. She had tried Prozac years before, and it had made things worse, not better. Now, caught between the demands of nursing and motherhood and the hormonal shifts pregnancy brings, she found herself sinking. She wasn't sure if trying another medication would help or simply add another layer of harm.

When perinatal psychiatrist Rana Jawish asked how she was doing, Odysseus broke. "It was very enlightening," she would later say. "I didn't realize I was not in a good place until someone else asked me." Jawish was running a clinical trial aimed at treating depression and anxiety in pregnant people, and when Odysseus learned of it, she felt something shift—not hope exactly, but permission. "If any time, now is the time," she thought. "I owe it to my children to try to be better for them."

The trial offered something different from what Odysseus had experienced before: no pills. Instead, it combined two approaches—cognitive behavioral therapy, a structured form of talk therapy, and transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, a technique that uses powerful magnetic fields to stimulate the brain regions that govern mood. The FDA had approved TMS for treatment-resistant depression in non-pregnant people back in 2009, but it remained largely unstudied in pregnancy, used off-label at best. Yet for a population where antidepressants carry uncertain safety profiles and where the need for treatment is urgent, the approach made sense. According to the CDC, maternal mental health conditions—depression, anxiety, substance use disorder—are now the leading cause of maternal death. The irony is bitter: the population most in need of mental health care often has the fewest safe options.

Odysseus's first TMS session unsettled her. "The magnetic pulse feels like a buzzing sensation in your brain," she recalled. "It's really weird." But the research team surrounded her with explanation and support, walking her through each step. Over six weeks, she received TMS multiple times weekly. Gradually, something shifted. The weight didn't vanish, but it became manageable. "Everything became a lot lighter and more tolerable," she said. "I felt like a better employee, a better nurse, a better leader, and a better mother."

Jawish's trial was small—just twenty patients—designed primarily to test whether the combined treatment was feasible and to identify obstacles people faced in completing it. It was too early to declare TMS effective for pregnant populations broadly. But Jawish saw the work as part of a larger conversation between her clinical practice and her research. What she observed in her patients shaped her questions; what she learned in trials improved how she cared for them. And she understood something fundamental: maternal mental health was never just about one woman. "If a mom is not doing well, everyone else in the family is affected," she said. "This is not women's mental health. This is community mental health."

Odysseus emerged from the trial with her own improvements, but she also carried something else—a sense that her participation mattered beyond her own recovery. "To be able to maybe contribute to other women having better access to better support and better outcomes was meaningful to me," she said. "It felt like an important study to participate in." To others struggling through pregnancy with depression or anxiety, she offered this: "You're not alone, even if it feels that way. It's OK to ask for help, and it's really brave. You don't have to be suffering." Jawish is now planning larger trials to determine whether TMS combined with therapy can reliably treat perinatal depression—work that could reshape what's available to pregnant people when medication feels too risky and suffering feels like the only option.