Beyond Survival Mode: A New Hope for Exhausted Minds Fighting PTSD

Groundbreaking real-world evidence brings new momentum to the future of trauma care

By Jess Wight | July 09, 2026

My anxiety is going down, my depression is going down, I feel everything coming down and being more alive for a change. You know, just feeling like you can take a deep breath. That’s one of the greatest takeaways that I’ve felt since [starting dTMS] is just I see myself being able to live my life for the first time alone.

Christopher, an army veteran who received dTMS for his PTSD discussing his story 

New research could soon reshape how post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its comorbid conditions are treated, offering renewed hope for those who continue to struggle despite existing therapies.

PTSD remains one of the most complex mental health conditions to manage. Recent data shows that around 40% of patients still meeting diagnostic criteria after completing conventional treatment. However, latest findings from BrainsWay suggest that deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (deep TMS) may offer a promising new approach, expanding the possibilities for people living with the enduring impact of this debilitating condition.

PTSD is a mental health condition that can develop after someone experiences or witnesses a deeply distressing or traumatic event. It fundamentally alters how a person thinks, feels, and responds to everyday situations - often causing flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, or a constant sense of being on edge.

The scale of this condition is vast, yet often underestimated:

o   High Exposure: Recent data suggests that more than 75% of adults in Canada will experience potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs) in their lifetime.

o   Rising Diagnoses: this widespread exposure has contributed to recent reports showing that 7.7% of Canadian adults have received a PTSD diagnosis – a statistic that continues to climb.

o   Hidden Cases: As with many mental illnesses, experts predict that many cases of PTSD go entirely undiagnosed.

Compounding this issue are several systemic barriers. According to government statistics, more than four in five Canadians seeking support for PTSD encounter obstacles to care, primarily driven by long wait times and rising costs.  

Despite growing public awareness, PTSD remains a complex condition that is often misunderstood. Its symptoms can vary widely from person to person, and many of the challenges associated with PTSD are not immediately visible to others. This lack of understanding can contribute to stigma, misconceptions, and delays in seeking or receiving appropriate support.

The nuanced presentation of PTSD can make treatment more demanding and less predictable than for other mental health disorders. This complexity is further intensified by comorbidity - the National Center for PTSD document approximately 80% of people with PTSD are diagnosed with at least one other mental illness.

Understanding comorbidity in PTSD helps healthcare providers tailor treatment to individual needs. Trauma can significantly affect psychological functioning, leading to multiple disorders, while pre-existing mental health difficulties may increase vulnerability to developing PTSD after trauma.

Authors of a 2020 paper discussing the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey in the UK explain: “It is plausible that depressive disorders as well as anxiety symptoms can be a consequence of PTSD as well as an independent risk factor for PTSD following trauma exposure. Both conditions could also be a vulnerability factor for developing PTSD once exposure to traumatic events occurs.”

The bidirectional relationship between comorbid conditions makes unravelling the web of symptoms a patient with PTSD very complex. One approach often adopted by healthcare providers is an integrated program designed to address multiple disorders concurrently.   

Common diagnoses often coinciding with PTSD include major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorder, and alcohol and substance abuse disorders.

Recent data shows MDD is the most common co-occurring condition, affecting half of all individuals with PTSD. Research has also uncovered that patients facing both diagnoses typically experience more severe depression than those with MDD alone.

An important consideration is the substantial overlap in the symptom profiles of the two conditions, which can make them difficult to distinguish in clinical settings. Both can involve low mood, sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating, and reduced interest in daily activities, contributing to their frequent co-occurrence. However, because of this shared symptomology, they favor a dual-focused, integrated treatment plan; addressing both disorders within a coordinated framework can improve the effectiveness by targeting the interconnected nature of their symptoms rather than treating each condition in isolation.

Current treatment approaches for comorbid PTSD with MDD rely on a combination of pharmacological interventions and trauma-focused therapies, such as Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure Therapy.

While these options are backed by research, real-world data reveals a tragically persistent gap in recovery:

o   more than one third of individuals with PTSD alone fail to recover despite engaging with treatment.

o   Remission rates are even lower for those with comorbid conditions.

o   20-35% of individuals withdraw from treatment entirely, often because they find therapies like Prolonged Exposure therapy too emotionally challenging to face.

These troubling statistics highlight a critical unmet need: an effective treatment that improves recovery rates without placing such a high emotional burden on patients that it reduces treatment completion.

In a press release issued this week, BrainsWay presented encouraging findings indicating that deep TMS may help address this unmet need.

Following at least 20 sessions of deep TMS, 83.5% of patients experienced a positive response – this was defined as a 50% reduction in PTSD symptoms, a benchmark commonly used throughout literature to indicate ‘recovery’. Though research is only in the preliminary stages, this study already outperforms current therapeutic strategies for comorbid PTSD and MDD which typically report non-response rates of between 25 and 60%.

“The promising outcomes observed across multiple clinical sites highlight the potential of Deep TMS to deliver meaningful benefits and support its role as potential treatment option for this challenging patient population.”

Toby Marton, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Mindful Health discussing the outcomes of BrainsWay’s clinical trial

This research presents a promising new direction for treatment. Mindful Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Toby Marton, notes “Patients living with both PTSD and depression often experience more severe symptoms and fewer effective treatment options,” and suggests deep TMS may combat this: this comparatively rapid treatment protocol could offer an effective alternative to improve the wellbeing of patients beyond the capabilities of current therapies.

While deep TMS is a relatively new application for trauma, previous smaller-scale pilot studies laid the groundwork for these findings:

o   A small-scale pilot study from 2016 reported significant reduction in symptoms of both PTSD and MDD in comorbid patients following a course of TMS

o   A second small pilot study published in 2019 combined TMS with Prolonged Exposure therapy. Participants experienced much greater reductions in depressive symptoms than those receiving PE alone. Crucially, the dropout rate did not increase, proving that adding TMS does not introduce additional therapeutic burden.

If future research demonstrates further that deep TMS is effective as a standalone treatment for PTSD with comorbid MDD, it could further reduce treatment demands, improve completion rates, and ultimately benefit more individuals living with these conditions.

it is important to note that both of these trials incorporated traditional TMS rather than deep TMS, and evidence favors deep TMS for treating MDD. Therefore, it could be assumed that due to comorbidity and the overlap of symptoms, trials using deep TMS could produce even more compelling results.

This BrainsWay study represents an important step towards FDA approval of deep TMS for PTSD treatment and adds to the growing evidence supporting its therapeutic potential. Although further peer-reviewed research is needed to confirm these findings, the study's ‘large and diverse patient population’ provides encouraging evidence that deep TMS could become a valuable addition to existing treatment options.

PTSD affects individuals in different ways, and recovery is rarely straightforward. By expanding the therapeutic applications of non-invasive brain stimulation, deep TMS has the potential to offer an alternative for people who struggle with the emotional demands of conventional trauma-focused therapies.

As research continues to evolve, innovations such as deep TMS may reshape the way PTSD and comorbid conditions are managed, offering clinicians greater flexibility and patients more personalized pathways to successful recovery.