Treatment-Resistant Depression in San Diego
Treatment-resistant depression is a description of your history, not your future. A physician-scientist's re-evaluation, diagnosis, medications, and FDA-cleared TMS, often finds the move that was missed. Led personally by Dr. Mario Salguero, MD, PhD.
Why Patients Choose Us
A meaningful share of "treatment-resistant" depression turns out to be something else, bipolar spectrum, a thyroid problem, sleep apnea, or depression tangled with substance use. Dr. Salguero checks before he treats.
An MD-PhD reads your trial history the way a scientist reads results: what the pattern of partial responses and failures actually points to next.
We offer FDA-cleared TMS, and we're not a TMS-only clinic. You get the treatment your case calls for, which is sometimes TMS, sometimes a smarter regimen, often both.
Alcohol and depression feed each other quietly. Board-certified in addiction psychiatry, Dr. Salguero treats that loop instead of ignoring it.
Is This You?
Our Approach
Meet Your Psychiatrist
A board-certified psychiatrist and former chief resident at UC San Diego, Dr. Salguero holds an MD-PhD, research training built for exactly the kind of problem a resistant depression presents: complex, multi-variable, and unsolved so far. Every case here gets that level of thinking.
How to Get Started
Call, text, or send the form. Bring your treatment history if you have it, it's the raw material.
Diagnosis re-confirmed, history audited, contributors ruled in or out.
A deliberate sequence, medication, TMS, or both, overseen by one physician throughout.
Frequently Asked Questions
The common working definition: depression that hasn't responded adequately to at least two antidepressants, each taken at a proper dose for a proper duration. Whether your history truly meets that bar is one of the first things the evaluation establishes.
That's genuinely common, subtherapeutic doses, too-short trials, or the wrong medication class for the actual diagnosis. It's also good news: it means untried, legitimate options remain before anything exotic is needed.
Often, but not automatically. TMS earned its FDA clearance in patients whose depression didn't respond adequately to medication, and it's frequently the strongest next step. The evaluation determines whether it's yours.
Yes, this is a full psychiatric practice, not a device clinic. Medication optimization, augmentation strategies, and TMS all live in the same plan, managed by the same physician.
Call or text 858-461-8614, or send the form. We respond quickly and will schedule your evaluation.
If you're searching for help with treatment-resistant depression in San Diego, you've probably accumulated a folder of prescriptions and a deep skepticism about anyone promising answers. Reasonable. So here's the unglamorous truth: resistant depression usually yields to method, not magic. Re-verify the diagnosis. Audit the failed trials, many weren't fair trials at all. Rule out the medical and behavioral contributors. Then sequence the remaining options deliberately, including TMS, which is FDA-cleared precisely for depression that hasn't responded to medication.
That method needs one physician with the depth to run all of it. At Brain Strength for Life, that's Dr. Mario Salguero, MD, PhD.
Years of failed treatment also teach a darker lesson, that hoping isn't safe. Patients arrive here braced for another shrug. What they get instead is a physician-scientist who treats their history as evidence, their skepticism as sensible, and their case as solvable until proven otherwise.
From San Diego, La Jolla, Del Mar, and Carmel Valley: if depression has beaten two medications or ten, the next step is the same. One thorough re-evaluation, and a plan that finally has a sequence to it.
Still Fighting? So Are We.
Dr. Salguero will re-examine the diagnosis, audit what's been tried, and lay out a deliberate next sequence, medication, TMS, or both. No pressure, no obligation, no shrugs.