A medication used in anaesthesia has been showing good results as a viable alternative treatment for those struggling with depression. Ketamine which has been used for recreational purposes as a party drug can be prescribed legally by doctors, reported by ABC News. For the last few years, ketamine has become more useful for people experiencing depression.
Ketamine showing good results
Generic ketamine has not been approved as a depression treatment. However, US doctors have been allowed to prescribe Food and Drug Administration approved medicine “off label” for other use. Since the 1970s, ketamine has been used in anaesthesia but the medicine has been successful in treating people who have been struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts. Research has been carried out to find whether ketamine that has been used as a party drug can be used to treat people with depression, post-trauma stress disorder and other psychiatric disorders.
As per the report, the FDA approved a “ketamine-related nasal spray drug” in conjunction with antidepressants in 2019. It has shown good results for people struggling with “treatment-resistant depression”. Dr Steven Mandel, founder and president of Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles told ABC News that ketamine is already a low-cost generic drug, it is unlikely that pharmaceutical companies would do the process for using it as a depression treatment.
As per the report, there are certain risks involved with ketamine. Dr Panagiota Korenis, a psychiatrist and associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine noted that patients need to be treated in the clinic and people cannot take multiple doses of medication to their home as the drug “can be abused potentially”. But, Korenis hopes that ketamine may prove itself as another powerful option for people with depression. Experts have been discussing over if ketamine is a psychedelic and will it be able to produce similar altered states of consciousness as MDMA and psilocybin. MDMA and psilocybin have shown healing properties in some studies. As per the report, there were about 60 ketamine clinics in the United States in 2015 and after three years, there were more than 300 ketamine clinics in the United States.