Botox in the glabellar region? A novel treatment for mood disorders?

From Psychology Today

There’s been a great deal of hue and cry over the proposed “Botax” that’s been running through Congress. That’s the street name for a suggested 5% levy on elective cosmetic surgery procedures that would, in theory, raise billions per year to fund expanded healthcare. The great majority of the uproar has come from doctors and consumers of cosmetic medicine concerned that the tax would put such procedures beyond the means of many patients. That’s an important issue, but not the objection I have in mind. I want to talk about the possibility that Botox may be an effective treatment for depression.

 My interest in this has been building for some time, but it was sparked higher by an experience I had recently after trying my own Botox injection. Not long after I had it, I went to see the new film about the late, great Michael Jackson, This Is It. Now, I grew up on the same street as the Jackson family; I saw some of the early parts of Michael’s story play out. So this movie affected me deeply. At the end, I wanted to cry at the tragedy of this brilliantly gifted man’s life ending so early. But I couldn’t. For some reason, the paralysis of the muscles in my glabellar area due to the injections of botulinum toxin A rendered me totally unable to cry. Curious. But even more surprisingly, when I couldn’t cry, I quickly stopped feeling sad. I left the movie with my girlfriend who was feeling very down and I felt so odd that I couldn’t find those emotions. I was ready to go to the next activity. Sadness was no where to be found. It was as if the emotion came up, couldn’t be expressed, and so, went away. Very curious indeed. Over the next weeks, I had many sad moments and again was unable to cry. The emotions lingered a bit but felt “unreal” and disconnected.

These odd moments, made me wonder about a few things. First, had other women (or men) experienced what I had experienced? Second, could Botox be an adjunctive treatment for depression? It is a great oversimplification to characterize clinical depression as just “feeling sad,” but of course overwhelming feelings of sadness or “the blues” are an important component of the disorder and perhaps the Botox may have some role in treating this disabling disorder.

 It was tough to find personal accounts to answer the first question so I am tossing the question out to all you blog readers and I am eager to learn from others’ experiences. As for the second question, there is preliminary but tantalizing evidence.