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. 2021 Dec 14:12:757142.
doi: 10.3389/fneur.2021.757142. eCollection 2021.

Why Has Deep Brain Stimulation Had So Little Impact in Psychiatry?

Roel J T Mocking  1 , Ilse Graat  1 , Damiaan Denys  1
Affiliations

Why Has Deep Brain Stimulation Had So Little Impact in Psychiatry?

Roel J T Mocking et al. Front Neurol. .

Abstract

Over two decades ago, the first scientific publication on deep brain stimulation (DBS) in psychiatry was published. The evidence for effectiveness of DBS for several psychiatric disorders has been steadily accumulating since the first report of DBS for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in 1999. However, the number of psychiatric patients treated with DBS is lagging behind, particularly in comparison with neurology. The number of patients treated with DBS for psychiatric indications worldwide probably does not exceed 500, compared to almost 300,000 patients with neurological disorders that have been treated with DBS within the same period of 20 years. It is not the lack of patients, knowledge, technology, or efficacy of DBS that hinders its development and application in psychiatry. Here, we discuss the reasons for the gap between DBS in neurology and in psychiatry, which seemed to involve the scientific and social signature of psychiatry.

Keywords: deep brain stimulation; implementation gap; neurology; precision medicine; psychiatry.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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