Ketamine treatment offers a unique approach to management of mental health and pain conditions
History of Ketamine
Ketamine is an anesthetic agent that was initially developed in the 1960s. It has been used for decades in operating rooms and emergency departments for many medical indications. Ketamine is a non-competitive antagonist of a central nervous system receptor called NMDA-R, although it remains unknown exactly how it works in the brain.
New Uses for Ketamine
More recently, low doses of ketamine have been noted to have psychedelic properties and are currently being studied for a variety of clinical conditions. Research has shown it to be very effective in managing depression in patients who have not responded to traditional anti-depressants and therapy.
Smaller studies have shown that it is also very likely to be helpful for obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and eating disorders. Ketamine has also been found to be beneficial in small studies of patients with substance abuse disorder and a variety of chronic pain conditions.
The most recent study of patients with depression showed that ketamine reduced symptoms of depression in 72% of patients. In 38% of patients, their symptoms resolved completely.
