“How I Cured My Depression” – Luke Cutforth

Youtuber Luke Cutforth shared his personal experience of rTMS treatment for depression at Smart TMS.

Known for his creative and comic videos, Luke has previously also shared his struggle with depression. He now describes himself as ‘cured’ after treatment with transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Luke’s Story

His video introduction reads:

“hi, this is the story of how i cured my supposedly incurable depression. i sometimes feel happy now. i hope you feel happy too. have a nice day ♥️ thanks so much to SmartTMS.”

Luke explains:

“Depression is an illness. It can’t be cured by positive thinking and I’m definitely not just being mopey or dehydrated.”

He has a diagnosis of Mixed Anxiety Depression Disorder (MADD), in addition to cyclothymia, a less well known condition which causes mood changes. Over 10 years of suffering on and off from depression, Luke says he’s tried lots of solutions but none have worked until now.

His journey with Smart TMS began when he attended the clinic in London with fellow vlogger Dodie, who was having treatment herself.

Over a year later, he found his depression was getting in the way of work on his film and realised that treatment would help him work – the justification he needed for pursuing treatment.

Although he was prepared to pay for the treatment, he explains that as a youtuber, Smart TMS offered him the treatment free in return for him agreeing to share his story.

Luke explains how treatment works by applying magnetic energy to the areas of the brain that deal with positive and negative emotion. The treatment stimulates the brain. Negative emotion like anxiety is treated with a very low pulse to make the anxiety part shrink, while positive emotion like happiness is treated with a higher pulse to make it grow.

He says:

“Basically I lay there for 22 minutes a day, every week day for 6 weeks, with a giant fidget spinner magnetically pulsing my brain – and somehow – it cured my depression!”

Luke continues:

“A lot of people ask me what it feels like which I always described as it’s like a woodpecker is smacking your brain!”

Another common question is whether it hurts. Luke describes that it does hurt, but in a way that is tolerable for 22 minutes a day, especially if it leads to a cure for depression.

He says after a few weeks, he noticed he was starting to feel different after each session:

“…when I left, everything seemed brighter. I felt happier. The dog that was in the office downstairs felt more cuddly and lovely and I made friends with the local bin men and went skating on my electric skateboard with them – which normally that would be an absolute I would not do that – too scary. Strangers? No, no, no. But I had a great time.”

Depression test scores

Luke explains that his results changed radically on one of the questionnaires commonly used to assess depression:

  • Before treatment – 26 out of 30
  • After treatment – usually under 5 out of 30

He continues:

“The best thing is that supposedly it’s permanent.”

He has remained well since treatment.

“If there’s one thing I want to convey in this video it’s that I have been in the position of having seemingly incurable depression and then I’ve managed to get it fixed. It reminded me that depression is an illness – it’s not just ‘you’re pathetic and lazy’. And it’s not just like you deserve this or maybe you’re just broken and everyone else is not broken.

“Having seen such a quick change in myself, I see how much of it is chemicals or the way your brain is working and it’s not that you deserve to be like that, it’s not that you’ll always be like that, you just have to find the way of fixing it.”

Find out more

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)