Recent News
Learn more about how ketamine therapy is delivering safe and effective results.
Are anti-anxiety meds making your life worse?
Lena Dunham isn’t alone in going overboard on benzos.
Many fans felt her pain on Monday when the 32-year-old “Girls” creator revealed on a podcast that she’s newly clean after a harrowing period of misusing the prescription sedatives, which are commonly prescribed to treat panic disorders and insomnia.

Ketamine to Treat Suicidal Ideation in Major Depressive Disorder
Ketamine may represent an effective adjunct therapy in the treatment of suicidal ideation in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), according to the results of a randomized clinical trial published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Evidence Is Mounting That The Drug Ketamine Can Actually Treat Chronic Migraines
When you hear about ketamine, you may associate it with being an illegal party drug that causes vivid hallucinations. But it's also a powerful anaesthetic, listed on the World Health Organisation's list of essential medicines.
If ketamine helps treat depression, why can’t doctors prescribe it?
Antidepressants are among the most commonly prescribed drugs throughout the western world. In fact, they are prescribed more than any other drug for Americans aged 18 to 44, and they are now taken four to five times more frequently than in the early 90s.
Onetime party drug hailed as miracle for treating severe depression
The Washington Post
After a lifetime of profound depression, 25 years of therapy and cycling through 18 antidepressants and mood stabilizers, Hartman, then 46, had settled on a date and a plan to end it all. The clinical trial would be his last attempt at salvation.
Ketamine could be speedy depression treatment video: here
Ketamine Shows Signs of Efficacy in Treating PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is highly prevalent in the United States military forces, with rates as high as 31% and 20% for Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) veterans, respectively. An estimated 50% of patients diagnosed with PTSD also present with chronic pain.
Ketamine Could Reduce PTSD For Soldiers In Combat, Study Suggests
Although it may seem counterintuitive, a new study suggests that giving soldiers a dose of the Schedule III drug, ketamine, before going into combat could have certain benefits. The findings, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January.
Ketamine offers new hope for patients with severe depression
Ketamine could save lives and offer rapid relief to many individuals for whom current treatments don’t work. It’s estimated as many as a third of patients with major depression do not get well, even after trying multiple antidepressants. And amid concerns that the development of novel antidepressants has stalled, ketamine research opens a possible avenue of treatment.
Drug ketamine brings depressed mice back to normal
“Depression is the second most expensive health problem that we face worldwide, but this fact is not very well known because there is a stigma attached to depression and people don’t like to talk about it,” says study leader Bernhard Lüscher, professor of biology and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State.
History of Psychosis May Not Exclude Ketamine for Depression
Preliminary evidence from two case reports suggests that a history of psychosis should not exclude a patient with severe depression from receiving ketamine in a clinical setting, researchers say.
"There are some real concerns about whether ketamine should be used in people with psychotic disorders, based mainly on early studies suggesting that some of the immediate effects of ketamine can actually mimic some of the symptoms of psychosis," Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry, Yale University.
Study shows ketamine may prevent PTSD symptoms
Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center, or CUMC, have discovered that a single dose of ketamine, given one week before a stressful event, has the potential to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, symptoms.
The study used mice that were given a small intravenous dose of ketamine, a drug used as a general anesthetic or rapid-acting antidepressant, and showed the potential to prevent PTSD symptoms.
Could a Drug Prevent Depression and PTSD?
TED Talk
The path to better medicine is paved with accidental yet revolutionary discoveries. In this well-told tale of how science happens, neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman shares news of a serendipitous breakthrough treatment that may prevent mental disorders like depression and PTSD from ever developing. And listen for an unexpected — and controversial — twist.
Ketamine Could Help Cure Addiction
The study authors turn their attention to Ketamine as a potential treatment for alcoholism, pointing to a clinical trial in which 66 percent of alcoholic patients remained abstinent a full year after receiving ketamine treatment, compared with 24 percent who received non-psychedelic therapy.
Ketamine Used as Stress Vaccine?
Researchers know how to boost mice's resilience to stress, but can the same techniques be used for humans? Brachman’s results consistently showed that there are ways to build resilience to stress, by both injecting immune cells from another animal and giving a dose of ketamine prior to stress.

ASRA: Ketamine Can Treat Stubborn Migraines
Ketamine, the anesthetic-turned-club-drug-turned-depression-therapy, has had a complicated history. And growing more so all the time: a pain physician told colleagues here that the ketamine infusions may be just the ticket for patients whose migraines and other headaches just won't quit.
Scientists are increasingly excited about ketamine, a party drug that could prevent depression
In the past five or 10 years ketamine — a drug that used to be primarily associated with psychedelically enhanced partying, K-holes, and jokes about horse tranquilizers — has captured the attention of the psychiatry community.
Ketamine offers hope for recurrent depression sufferers
Ketamine, used as an anaesthetic for many years, may offer hope to people suffering from recurrent depression. Researchers from Trinity College Dublin are investigating whether the drug can help people who recover from severe depression to remain well.
A One-Time Treatment Might Prevent Depression From Traumatic Stress
There might be a drug out there that somehow instills the kind of mental resilience that lets some people go through a horrible experience without reliving it in a distressing way afterward. Not everyone who goes through trauma gets depressed, but those who do have a hard time shaking it. What if instead of treating that depression, it could be prevented?
Cleveland Clinic team approved for $11.8 million to study treatment-resistant depression
Cleveland Clinic researchers have been approved for $11.8 million in funding to study ways to help patients suffering from severe depression.The focus of the research will be to examine strategies for treating patients who do not get adequate relief from initial therapy.
Through the work of Dr. Amit Anand, vice chair for research in Cleveland Clinic's Center for Behavioral Health, the study will look into and compare the effectiveness of two treatments: electroconvulsive therapy versus ketamine in patients who suffer from severe treatment-resistant depression.
Ketamine May Be The Next Great Hope In Treating Mental Illness
The largest clinical trial of ketamine for the ongoing treatment of depression has been launched across Australia and New Zealand this week.
The three-year trial involves seven research institutions, testing 200 patients who have not previously responded to existing depression medication.
Ketamine for treatment-resistant depression: recent developments and clinical applications
Approximately one-third of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) do not respond to existing antidepressants, and those who do generally take weeks to months to achieve a significant effect. There is a clear unmet need for rapidly acting and more efficacious treatments. We will review recent developments in the study of ketamine, an old anaesthetic agent which has shown significant promise as a rapidly acting antidepressant in treatment-resistant patients with unipolar MDD, focusing on clinically important aspects such as dose, route of administration and duration of effect.
‘Club Drug’ Ketamine Provides Hope in Fight Against Depression
Scientists are increasingly convinced that ketamine, a popular “club drug,” may be a viable treatment option for people who suffer from depression. The drug could hold particular promise for people who are suicidal, according to the results of one small study.
Depression is so common that people in the U.S. spend about $11 billion each year to relieve their symptoms. Most antidepressants work by adjusting the brain chemicals that can affect our mood, and while some are effective, the drugs are far from perfect.
How Ketamine is Curing Depression
Researchers have identified the ketamine breakdown product that gives the drug its antidepressant effects, which could lead to faster, more-effective mood stabilizers in the future.
When the antidepressant effects of ketamine were first reported a decade ago, the anesthetic drug seemed likely to change the way doctors treat the most persistent cases of depression. Since 2006, the surgical drug has been shown to work in patients with treatment-resistant depression and provide relief much faster than mood stabilizers like SSRIs.
How the Club Drug Ketamine Works to Fight Depression
A breakdown product of the drug reduces signs of depression in mice without side effects.
The popular club drug ketamine—or 'Special K'—is also a fast-acting antidepressant, but how it works has eluded scientists. Now a team reports in Nature that the mood-lifting effect may not be caused by the drug itself, but by one of the products formed when the body breaks the drug down into smaller molecules.
'Club Drug' Ketamine Rescues Suicidal Patients
A 'club drug' used as an anesthetic can help clear up the distraught thinking of people on the brink of suicide, researchers reported Tuesday.
Half the patients given infusions of ketamine said they experienced relief from their thoughts of suicide, Dr. Dawn Ionescu of Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues reported.
Ketamine Lifts Depression via a Byproduct of its Metabolism
A chemical byproduct, or metabolite, created as the body breaks down ketamine likely holds the secret to its rapid antidepressant action, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and grantees have discovered. This metabolite singularly reversed depression-like behaviors in mice without triggering any of the anesthetic, dissociative, or addictive side effects associated with ketamine.
What It’s Like to Have Your Severe Depression Treated With a Hallucinogenic Drug
Everyone’s depression is different, but Ted, a 40-year-old resident of Portland, Oregon, describes his as a “continuous dark veil — a foul, dark, awful perspective that informs every moment of your whole life.” He’d tried to treat it with antidepressants, therapy, visits to psychiatrists, “the whole nine,” but although the antidepressants kept him functional, they by no means offered relief. He was getting desperate, so when his sister — an obstetrician who works in New York — mentioned the National Institute of Health was conducting experimental studies using ketamine to treat depression, he gave them a call.

5 Treatments to Help You Beat Depression When SSRIs Don’t Work
f you suffer from depression symptoms that don’t abate, or don’t abate entirely, with conventional treatments, you’re not the only one. Treatment-resistant depression is very common. Thirty to 40 percent of the 13 to 14 million Americans who are diagnosed with depression each year won’t experience full recovery, or any recovery, with standard SSRI treatment.

Allergan To Buy Antidepressant Maker For $560 Million With Hopes Of Preventing Suicides
Allergan AGN -2.15%,the drug giant that is famed for Botox but also makes antibiotics and an Alzheimer’s treatment, will spend $560 million to purchase Naurex, an Evanston, Ill.-based developer of antidepressants that can work in hours, compared to weeks for existing depression pills.