1. Introduction
anxiety, depression, MDD, major depression disorder, Depression, Alzheimer
DISORDER, ALZHEIMER
Transcranial pulse stimulation (TPS) is a recent development in non-invasive brain stimulations (NIBS) that has been proven to be effective in terms of significantly improving Alzheimer patients’ cognition, memory, and execution functions. Nonetheless, there is, currently, no trial evaluating the efficacy of TPS on adults with major depression disorder (MDD) nationwide. In this single-blinded, randomized controlled trial, a 2-week TPS treatment comprising six 30 min TPS sessions were administered to participants. Participants were randomized into either the TPS group or the Waitlist Control (WC) group, stratified by gender and age according to a 1:1 ratio. Our primary outcome was evaluated by the Hamilton depression rating scale-17 (HDRS-17). We recruited 30 participants that were aged between 18 and 54 years, predominantly female (73%), and ethnic Chinese from 1 August to 31 October 2021. Moreover, there was a significant group x time interaction (F(1, 28) = 18.8, Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a great deal of published work examining the associations between COVID-19 and mental health. In particular, there have been studies conducted globally on anxiety and depression in the general population [A large-scale multi-country cross-sectional study was conducted involving ten countries comprising 25,053 individuals between 24 March and 30 April 2020 [Depression is a debilitating disorder affecting individuals’ levels of bio-psychosocial functioning across different age groups [