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Mental illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and addiction are notoriously hard to treat and often don’t respond to drugs. But a new wave of treatments that stimulate the brain with electricity are showing promise on patients and in clinical trials. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we talk to three experts and one patient about the history of treating mental illness, how new technology and deeper understanding of the brain are leading to better treatments and where the neuroscience of mental illness is headed next.

It’s not uncommon to hear people joke about how their “OCD” makes them want to straighten a crooked picture or clean a smudge on a countertop, but for people actually living with severe obsessive compulsive disorder, the reality is anything but funny.

Read the full article on The Conversation website, featuring Jacinta O'Shea, Department of Psychiatry

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