Research

tDCS has been used in clinics for over 25 years to treat depression. There are multiple sources of evidence that show it is effective and there are no serious side effects. These range from placebo-controlled clinical trials, to NHS studies and open label trials. We have gathered the most prominent research papers in the tDCS community and listed them below.

Placebo-controlled

randomised clinical trial

Published in the authoritative Nature Medicine, the design of this trial is considered the gold standard method for evaluating efficacy and took place at Kings College London, UTHealth Houston and the University of East London.

The clinical trial, which lasted 10 weeks, was the largest of its kind and involved patients in the US and UK. Results showed that 57.5% of patients in the treatment group went into remission (meaning that they are no longer considered to be depressed), whilst 64.2% were measured to have an improvement in symptoms of at least 50%. Patients who took a 10-week course of the treatment were about twice as likely to see their depression go into remission than those in a control group who performed the same procedure with the current switched off.

No serious side effects associated with using the device were reported from the treatment group.

Woodham, R.D., Selvaraj, S., Lajmi, N. et al

October 2024

"Beneficial effects in cases of depression that doesn't respond to drugs or therapy."

Independently published

NHS studies

5 NHS services have been using Flow, they each have independently published their results.

Crisis Team, NHS Leicestershire

October 2024

80% of patients reported a decrease in their depression symptoms

Community Mental Health, NHS Northamptonshire

February 2024

Flow has been successfully integrated into a CMHT depression treatment

Postnatal depression, NHS Northamptonshire

August 2024

Improvements in depressive symptoms, mood, sleep quality, and overall well-being

GP Services, NHS Northamptonshire

November 2023

Most participants described a positive impact on depressive symptoms, sleep, and functioning

GP Services, NHS Northamptonshire

May 2024

Flow tDCS can be delivered through a primary healthcare general practice service

Clinical research

into tDCS

The Flow brain stimulation treatment is based on decades of clinical research with the most recent meta-analyses showing that tDCS has similar efficacy to other treatments but with fewer side effects.

Across 20+ randomised controlled trials, tDCS has been shown to be superior to placebo/sham and no serious adverse events have been observed. tDCS provides an alternative to medication that is effective, safe and accessible.

Nikolin et al.

March 2023

tDCS effect sizes reached a peak at around 6 weeks

Frengi et al.

July 2020

tDCS for depression is definitely effective (level A evidence)

Moffa et al.

April 2020

A meta analysis: tDCS was an effective intervention at reducing depressive symptoms

Razza et al.

February 2020

An analysis of 23 clinical trials with 1092 patients, showing that tDCS is superior to placebo/ sham