Nolan Williams, MD

Nolan Williams, MD, was a prominent neuropsychiatrist who pioneered transformative treatments for severe mental health conditions, including depression and PTSD.

Born in 1982 in Charleston, South Carolina, Dr. Williams received his undergraduate degree from the College of Charleston in 2003 and his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina in 2008.  Following residencies in both neurology and psychiatry, Dr. Williams joined the faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine.  At Stanford, he became a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and served as Director of the Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab.  During his career at Stanford, Dr. Williams developed and studied novel neuropsychopharmacology and neuromodulation interventions for depression, suicide prevention, and PTSD.

Dr. Williams conducted innovative research on the use of ibogaine, a psychoactive substance from the root of the iboga shrub native to Africa, for the treatment of PTSD.  After successfully campaigning for Stanford to permit trials with ibogaine, a controlled substance without any approved medical uses, Dr. Williams conducted a clinical trial investigating the use of ibogaine in veterans with traumatic brain injuries who were experiencing symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety.  Dr. Williams’s work suggested that ibogaine may hold promise for the treatment of mental health disorders, spurring further investment in the research and development of ibogaine-based therapies.

Dr. Williams is best known for his work with neuromodulation for the treatment of depression and PTSD.  Dr. Williams developed an accelerated form of transcranial magnetic stimulation (“TMS”), a neuromodulation therapy used in the treatment of depression.  Dr. Williams speculated that some patients were being underdosed with traditional TMS, and he used neuroscientific evidence about the conditions that maximized neuroplasticity to design an accelerated, targeted TMS protocol that produced substantially higher remission rates than traditional TMS.  Dr. Williams’s protocol, called the Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy (“SAINT”) or Stanford Neuromodulation Therapy (“SNT”), received FDA approval in 2022 and is becoming the gold standard neuromodulation therapy for the treatment of severe depression.

Tragically, Dr. Williams died by suicide in 2025 at the age of 43.

 

Photo Source/Photo Credit: Keith Westra Photography