Ketamine is an anesthetic that is approved by the FDA and has been used widely around the world for more than 50 years. More recently, it has also been used as a medication because of its fast antidepressant properties that experts in mental health have been researching for more than two decades.
Although ketamine is not regarded as first-line therapy for depression, chronic pain, or other mental health problems, it could be utilized off-label to alleviate severe cases of anxiety, depression, and PTSD that have failed to respond to conventional therapies or medications.
If ketamine is administered to a patient through a gradual, constant IV (intravenous) drip, it offers an extremely therapeutic and calming effect to the regions of the patient’s brain that control mood and behavior. Due to its ability to provide swift and lasting relief even for severe cases of treatment-resistant depression, ketamine has been considered the best recent breakthrough in depression treatment.
This post will discuss the risks and benefits of using ketamine to treat depression and other mental health challenges.
Benefits of Ketamine Therapy
Depression is the leading cause of disability globally and the main mental health disorder that results in suicidal tendencies. However, about two in three people experiencing major depression do obtain lasting symptom remission with conventional therapies and antidepressants. The remaining one out of three do not.
For people who are experiencing persistent PTSD, TRD, chronic pain, or debilitating anxiety, ketamine infusion therapy provides several important benefits, and they include:
- High success rate. Although ketamine infusion therapy is still under study, there is plenty of research to prove that it has a high success rate in alleviating persistent depression. This success rate has made it advantageous to people who have failed to find long-lasting relief with traditional treatments.
- Fast-acting symptom relief. Ketamine infusion therapies often work swiftly to alleviate depressive symptoms. The main reason behind this fast relief is that ketamine accelerates a faster increase of glutamate. Glutamate assists in restoring and strengthening crucial neural pathways and connections in the areas of the human brain that are mainly affected by depression.
- Long-lasting symptom remission. Ketamine infusion therapy is not a treatment that heals depression with just one session, but it is also not similar to the conventional antidepressants that have to be consumed daily for years. Instead, ketamine infusion therapies encourage essential changes in the brain that result in lasting symptom relief over one treatment cycle. In the case of an average patient, ketamine infusions require a series of 6 infusions that should be spaced out for two to three weeks. The initial treatment is subsequently followed by a maintenance phase that involves booster infusions when required.
Drawbacks of Ketamine Therapy
Although ketamine infusions provide numerous benefits in the alleviation of depression, there is no treatment that has no flaws. The disadvantages of ketamine infusions are linked to their potential addictive properties and dissociative effects. Furthermore, even if this therapy involves sub-anesthetic doses to alleviate depression, it still can result in temporary side effects such as:
- Floating sensations
- Fuzzy vision
- Mild hallucinations
- Dizziness
Due to this, ketamine infusions have to be approved for use by patients after a comprehensive evaluation has been done, received in a ketamine-certified clinical setting, and administered by an experienced provider.
The likelihood of experiencing side effects means that you should have someone take you to and from your treatment session. Although these side effects can diminish swiftly, the treatment can leave the patient feeling groggy or tired until they have had enough rest. Also, people with a history of drug abuse should not use ketamine infusion therapies due to their potentially addictive properties.