Ketamine may help those suffering from treatment-resistant depression, according to a study by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
Repeat intravenous treatment with low doses of the anesthetic drug ketamine quickly reduced suicidal thoughts in a small group of patients with treatment-resistant depression, the study reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. A team of MGH investigators looked at outpatients who had been experiencing suicidal thoughts for three months or longer.
“Our finding that low doses of ketamine, when added on to current antidepressant medications, quickly decreased suicidal thinking in depressed patients is critically important because we don’t have many safe, effective, and easily available treatments for these patients,” said Dawn Ionescu, MD, of the Depression Clinical and Research Program in the MGH Department of Psychiatry.
“While several previous studies have shown that ketamine quickly decreases symptoms of depression in patients with treatment-resistant depression,” Ionescu continued, “many of them excluded patients with current suicidal thinking.”
Suicide attempts are 20 times higher in patients with depression than the general population.
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.