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Sandy Rasmussen of Hot Springs says SAINT® Depression Therapy has given her control over her life. Image by Bryan Clifton

After 60 Years of Suffering, Arkansas Woman Finds Remission with FDA-Cleared SAINT® Depression Therapy

One-year anniversary represents extraordinary milestone for patient and UAMS

March 23, 2026 | LITTLE ROCK — This month marks the one-year anniversary of remission for an Arkansas patient who has been battling major depression for more than 60 years, experiencing countless medications, interventions and sadly, multiple suicide attempts.

For Hot Springs resident Sandy Rasmussen, “major depression” wasn’t just a diagnosis, it was a constant companion for much of her life. That is, until she became one of the first Arkansans to receive SAINT^® Depression Therapy, a noninvasive, rapid-acting treatment shown to achieve remission in 79% of people with depression in just five days.

Available at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) — the first commercial site in the United States to offer SAINT and still the only provider in Arkansas and the surrounding region — this innovative therapy offered Rasmussen something that six decades of medication and other treatments never could: her life back.

UAMS’ Psychiatric Research Institute first brought the SAINT® neuromodulation system to Arkansas in 2024 as a pioneering step in the treatment of long-term depression. The FDA-cleared, personalized technology uses precise functional MRI (fMRI) brain imaging to map each patient’s unique neural circuitry and pinpoint the exact region of the brain involved in depression. It then delivers well-tolerated, precisely targeted magnetic pulses to treat the person’s depression over the course of just five days. The result is a personalized, accelerated treatment that delivers rapid remission for many people who have struggled with depression — like Rasmussen — for years or even decades.

More than 30% of Arkansans suffer from clinically significant depressive symptoms, according to the Arkansas Health Survey, substantially higher than the national rate of 18%. For many patients, their symptoms of depression do not respond to multiple trials of antidepressants. When this happens, their depression is referred to as “treatment-resistant.” Rasmussen was one of these people.

Speaking at a news conference at UAMS today, Rasmussen thanked the UAMS psychiatrists and staff who treated her as well as the inventors of the groundbreaking SAINT® therapy.

“I’ve been dealing with depression and ideas of suicide since I was 12 years old. I’ve taken almost every antidepressant that you can imagine but none of them worked,” she said.

After seeing minimal results from electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), Rasmussen opted for the SAINT therapy, developed by Magnus Medical of Burlingame, California, and cleared in 2022 by the Food and Drug Administration as a new approach for patients with treatment-resistant depression.

Rasmussen underwent her first treatment in March 2025. For five days, she traveled between her home in Hot Springs and UAMS to undergo SAINT’s accelerated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatments on an outpatient basis.

“I started seeing results from the treatment by that first weekend. I know the difference it made in my life because before I had the SAINT treatment, I thought I had tried everything and was losing hope. I was very irritable, I was always crying and I said a lot of mean things to people,” said Rasmussen. “After the treatment, almost everybody says that I act much happier. I get out of the house a lot more, and I can deal with things a lot better. I feel like I have control over my life now.”

Unlike antidepressants or traditional TMS, which can take weeks or months to produce results, SAINT Depression Therapy is completed in five days. In landmark clinical trials, 79% of patients with Major Depressive Disorder or Treatment-Resistant Depression achieved remission of their depression, on average in just 2.6 days.  Clinical trials are ongoing to assess SAINT’s impact on additional brain health conditions.

Nearly 1 in 3 Arkansans report symptoms of depression. As more patients and providers learn about SAINT as an option for treatment-resistant depression, Laura Dunn, M.D., director of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute, expects her team at UAMS to continue providing hope to those who have struggled with depression, often for many years. “Being able to provide this innovative and noninvasive treatment to patients right here in Arkansas is something I am very excited about,” she said.

“When we see our patients able to experience their life fully again, to get back to their activities they used to enjoy, it’s truly one of the best things we get to do here at UAMS.” Dunn added. “I’m really grateful and honored that we are able to offer SAINT to help patients like Sandy.”

“Sandy’s story is a reminder of why this work matters — and why it can’t wait,” said Brandon Bentzley, M.D., Ph.D., co-founder and chief medical officer of Magnus Medical. “For too long, we’ve accepted that a significant portion of people with depression simply won’t get better. SAINT is proving that belief wrong, one patient at a time.”

Bentzley added that UAMS’ leadership in bringing the therapy to Arkansas represents a model for the future of brain health care.

“What UAMS has built here is more than a treatment program, it represents a beacon for what brain health care can look like when world-class science meets genuine compassion for the people who need it most,” he said. “We are at the beginning of a new era, one where depression is no longer a life sentence and where the brain itself becomes the map to recovery. UAMS had the vision and the courage to be first to offer this therapy commercially, and we are proud to be their partner in making that future real for the people of Arkansas and beyond.”

For more information about the SAINT program, call (501) 526-6498, email Psychiatry-Interventional@uams.edu or visit https://psychiatry.uams.edu/clinical-care/interventional-psychiatry/. Patient referrals should be faxed to (501) 603-1897.

About Magnus Medical & SAINT® Depression Therapy — Magnus Medical is a privately held neuromodulation company founded in 2020 to advance precision medicine in brain health. Its flagship product, the SAINT^® neuromodulation system, is the first FDA-cleared treatment for major depressive disorder to use functional MRI data to guide personalized, non-invasive brain stimulation over an accelerated five-day schedule. SAINT has been designated a Breakthrough Device by the FDA and is the first mental health therapy to receive innovation support from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services through both the New Technology Add-on Payment and New Technology Ambulatory Payment Classification programs. In foundational clinical trials, 79% of patients achieved remission in an average of 2.6 days. Clinical trials are ongoing for additional neuropsychiatric conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar depression and postpartum depression; these indications have not been cleared by the FDA. For more information, visit magnusmedical.com.

UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and eight institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute, Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and the Institute for Community Health Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,553 students and 1,015 medical residents and fellows. It is the state’s largest public employer with about 12,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube or Instagram.

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