Brighten Your World: Ketamine Treatment for those with Bipolar

Ketamine is an anesthetic medication that blocks the NMDA receptor that has also been used as a recreational drug due to its dissociative properties. It is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines because of its safety and efficacy for anesthesia. More recently, ketamine has been discovered as a safe and effective treatment for depression, and randomized controlled trials have shown rapid improvement in mood as well as reduction in suicidality compared to people who receive a placebo or another drug.

Adults age 18 and over who suffer from severe depression and have not had success with traditional treatments for depression are eligible for ketamine treatment. Our comprehensive evaluation will include a medical history and basic lab results to ensure ketamine therapy is safe for you.

Several randomized controlled trials demonstrate that ketamine has made a significant improvement in depressive symptoms and suicidality over the course of the first 2 weeks. In fact, if ketamine does not work for you after 2 sessions, the data suggest it is unlikely to work at all. Several studies have looked at how long the effects of Ketamine last. This graph shows just one such study’s results.

For depression, the doses of ketamine used are much lower than the dose for anesthesia, making it relatively safe. That said, ketamine does carry the risk of changing your blood pressure and heart rate, which we will monitor throughout the ketamine infusion therapy. Longer term risks include urinary symptoms, cognitive impairment (with prolonged use), and substance use disorders. We will monitor for these symptoms throughout the treatment.

When considering ketamine treatment, patients want to know how much ketamine depression treatments cost. Ketamine therapy can be very effective in relieving the symptoms of treatment-resistant depression.