Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Depression and Psychosis: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Transcranial direct current stimulation, one of the neuromodulation paradigms, is attracting interest as a novel method to treat various central nervous system disorders. It is safe, portable, and cost-effective, and has been applied experimentally for patients with various neuropsychiatric conditions. For the clinical importance and preliminary positive results, growing number of randomized controlled trials to patients with depression or schizophrenia are reported, followed by systematic reviews and meta-analyses. However, former research specifically focuses on depression or psychosis in psychiatric disorders. Therefore, we provide a systematic review of studies reporting the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation in ameliorating these symptoms not limited to psychiatric patients or objective scales by examining double-blind sham-controlled trials.