Does Ketamine Work in Reducing Treatment-Resistant Depression?

Aurora Mental Health & Wellness opened in Waite Park with the mission of helping clients address mental health issues in a comfortable, spa-like setting. They offer psychiatric services to the community and are specialists in cutting-edge procedures such as ketamine therapy and Spravato.

IV ketamine and Spravato are therapies that often allow patients who have tried other treatments without success to see marked improvement quickly, according to Aurora Mental Health & Wellness. Spravato is a nasal spray form of ketamine that the FDA has approved specifically for stubborn depression after both short-term and long-term trials.

Meanwhile, ketamine has been used for decades in anesthesia and as a rapid pain reliever, but more recently, it has been used "off-label" for stubborn mood disorders, including depression and anxiety.

So that leaves some patients asking: Does ketamine work?

To answer that question, many doctors look to the 2017 consensus statement published in the peer-reviewed JAMA Psychiatry, which states:

Several studies now provide evidence of ketamine hydrochloride’s ability to produce rapid and robust antidepressant effects in patients with mood and anxiety disorders that were previously resistant to treatment. Despite the relatively small sample sizes, lack of longer-term data on efficacy, and limited data on safety provided by these studies, they have led to increased use of ketamine as an off-label treatment for mood and other psychiatric disorders.

One of the studies the statement authors mentioned was a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 68 patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder that found "after 2 weeks of treatment, patients treated with ketamine two times weekly showed a 69% rate of response and 37.5% rate of remission vs. placebo at 15% and 7.7%, respectively."

They also encouraged clinicians to evaluate the potential benefits and risks of ketamine treatment against the "patient’s severity of depression, duration of current episode, previous treatment history, and urgency for treatment."

If you're wondering whether IV ketamine and Spravato could help you, visit the Aurora Mental Health & Wellness website and schedule a consultation. The staff there is committed to providing both these important medications in a comfortable and serene setting. They are administered in private rooms under medical supervision, and support persons can wait in the public waiting area or join the patient in the treatment room.

Get started by visiting auroramhw.com or calling 320-390-7338.