The first line of pharmacologic treatment for MDD is typical antidepressants, which include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and tricyclic antidepressants. However, these medications routinely take several weeks to take effect and come with a variety of side effects including weight gain and sexual dysfunction, resulting in adherence issues 8. In addition, many those with depression do not gain the desired benefit (i.e., decreased depression) after taking anti-depressant medication. Nurses and pharmacists can play a crucial role during ordering and administration, guarding against improper dosing and checking for adverse events and drug interactions. Important discharge education includes informing patients not to drive, use heavy machinery, or perform potentially hazardous activities for 24 hours after the administration of ketamine. Critical care supervision is necessary for patients under mechanical ventilation.
- People with drug addictions involving ketamine can be treated using an array of evidence-based or holistic therapies.
- The risk of HIV, hepatitis, and other blood-borne infectious diseases exists for those who share needles when drugs are used recreationally.
- Additionally, the use of ketamine and ECT together in treating suicidal ideation is an interesting new direction to take these two treatments.
- It has also been implicated for the treatment of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia, treatment of depression, and treatment of addiction—although ketamine itself is a commonly misused drug.
Overdose
Medication, outpatient, and inpatient treatment are generally available to address the health effects of addiction including ketamine misuse. In conclusion, ketamine toxicity and addiction pose significant risks to a small segment of the population, and given increasing utilization, the prevalence of these phenomena is expected to increase. Typically, only supportive care is necessary for patients with ketamine toxicity. Patients who experience symptom relief after intoxication should have continuous monitoring for 1 to 2 hours after their last symptom resolves.
- People who use ketamine recreationally will typically take the drug orally in pill form, or snorted in its white powder form.
- The drug can cause a dissociative high characterized by hallucination, altered reality, drowsiness and sedation.
- Ketamine is a drug that dates back to the 1960s and has been used for years as a powerful anesthetic.
- It is also used with an oral antidepressant for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in adults.
- People who regularly use ketamine sometimes inject it to get a bigger hit.
Online Therapy Can Help
Chronic and prolonged use of ketamine can damage numerous organs and lead to tolerance and psychological addiction. The Controlled Substance Act classifies ketamine as a Schedule III non-narcotic drug. Because of its pain-relieving and mental effects, it can cause dependence, the need to take higher doses to get the same effect, and addiction. Due to the unpredictable nature of ketamine, it is difficult for the user to gauge how much is too ketamine addiction much. Sometimes an overdose can occur after a small dose of ketamine, especially if other drugs or alcohol have also been ingested.
Physical health risks
Due to the dearth of evidence regarding the therapeutic value of ketamine for certain mental health conditions, including suicidal ideation, more research to address the major gaps is warranted. The purpose of this narrative review is to identify recently published studies that describe the therapeutic uses of ketamine for mental health. There are a number of methodological differences between ketamine studies that would benefit from standardising to aid interpretation of findings as more psychiatric indications are researched as targets for ketamine treatment. One area of discrepancy has been the use of active (typically midazolam) versus inactive placebos (typically saline).
Ketamine (sold under brand name Ketalar) is a schedule III controlled substance, the same category as codeine and anabolic steroids. Schedule III substances can lead to physical dependence, and are very likely to lead to psychological dependence. In animal studies, however, the safety ratio (defined as the proportion of the usual recreational dose to a fetal or lethal dose) has been used to evaluate the acute risk observed with ketamine. During supervised treatments, medical experts actively monitor patients’ blood pressure to ensure that they are safe. Medical experts are planning to offer supervised ketamine treatments at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital in the near future. University of Colorado psychiatrists are offering some ketamine treatments on the Anschutz campus and are working to accommodate more patients over the next year.