There's Another Way to Treat Depression!

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.

One question I keep asking 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.

One book I have consulted, called A Symphony in the Brain, by Jim Robbins, suggests why neurofeedback hasn't "exploded onto the treatment landscape."

"Brain wave training remains a victim of the fact that it is outside mainstream concepts, is far ahead of the science of how it works, has a persistent but undeserved reputation as a softheaded 'new age' idea, and is a model that -- unlike the drug model -- doesn't lend itself to astronomical profits." OK, now that makes sense. So far, Big Pharma hasn't found a way to make money on neurofeedback. How amazing is that! When I tell people about neurofeedback, they inevitably ask me how it works, so I tell them what I know. I sit in front of a computer screen and I am presented with a series of strong visual images (say for example, dramatically beautiful photos of the cosmos, like the one below.) But I am not given the whole image; instead, I am given the image in pieces, a small rectangle at a time. My brain gets rewarded with another piece of the image only if I'm emitting the optimal brain waves.

In this way, my brain is learning to reprogram itself. What do I have to do in order to get these new and improved brain waves? Not much. I am told simply to relax and focus on the image. Often, I find myself smiling as I think about the fact that I am, in effect, crafting a new and healthier brain. Honestly, it feels rather cosmic.

OK, but I can't say precisely how that brain reprogramming happens. How exactly do brain neurons that have been firing one way for years, suddenly change gears and fire in another way?

Recently, I learned that neurofeedback practitioners aren't exactly sure how it works either, but they know it does work. And unlike many antidepressant drugs, neurofeedback doesn't seem to have any adverse side effects, either.

Before I go further I should say 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 (a man with PhD in Psychology) last June and pretty soon Karen (who was trained as a RN and a researcher) 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. It has made all the difference in how my sister feels about life. She is upbeat and energetic, and thinking about life in a positive way.

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 crevass of fear, depression and terror at what was to come.

Meanwhile, a week later, my husband was told that he needed major back surgery. That too had me tied up in knots. The combination was deadly, or so it felt in late 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, not until this!”

That was enough for me. I quickly called the neurofeedback practitioner 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 as far back as the 1970s and 1980s, when researchers began studying the effects of neurofeedback on control epilepsy. One of the biggest proponents of the field today is psychologist Sebern Fisher, who is based in Northampton, MA. Dr. Fisher trains practitioners in neurofeedback all over the world. Beginning in about 1996, she began using neurofeedback on children and adolescents who were suffering from severe abuse and trauma.

As clinical director of a residential treatment center in Massachusetts for many years, Dr. Fisher encountered some of the most difficult and destructive behaviors imaginable in a population of kids who never had love from a mother or other primary caretaker. Many of these kids were shipped from one foster home to another. Most suffered from neglect or complete abandonment.

What's amazing is that Dr. Fisher discovered that neurofeedback worked wonders in this hard-to-treat population. Neurofeedback acted on the so-called "primitive" brain, helping kids and young adults who desperately needed to deal with their fear, the emotion which is at the heart of so-called developmental trauma. What Dr. Sebern found is that after treatment with neurofeedback, these children were able to begin talk therapy for the very first time in their lives.

When I first saw Margaret Dondiego,

I had the feeing that no amount of talk therapy would move me out of my slump. I was completely unwilling to consider that I might be able to meet the challenges facing me. Or think about life in a positive way. But after only a few sessions, I felt like I was back in the land of the living, feeling hopeful in spite of the problems I had perceived to be overwhelming only weeks before.

I have told Margaret several times over the last three months that I feel "resilient," that is, I have a calm feeling of confidence in myself. And I believe in a gut way that I can handle life's ups and downs.

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 Dondiego for neurofeedback in her office in Massachusetts. But Margaret has helped me acquire (and wire) that silly contraption that 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.

I am living proof that it works. I continue to marvel at the power of neurofeedback to positively affect the mind and brain. As Robbins suggests, "The effects of neurofeedback are not subtle. They are extremely robust. There is nothing else like it, not even other kinds of biofeedback That's one of the reasons it has languished. There is nothing to compare it to."

Unfortunately, practitioners and researchers trying to get grants to study neurofeedback have been stymied. One highly respected researcher at UCLA, who has published more than 150 papers in top journals, has applied for grants to continue studying neurobeedback; he has not succeeded.

"...the National Institutes of Health will not give us grants," he told author Robbins. "We've written solid grants but the minute you use the term neurofeedback certain people's minds snap shut. Sometimes I feel like Galileo."