When it comes to coping with severe depression, many patients are prescribed standard antidepressants like Prozac or Wellbutrin. But for those who are among the roughly 30 percent of depressed patients who don't respond to standard antidepressants, the situation is far more dire.
An in-depth report from Bloomberg details how the club drug ketamine — known on the street as Special K — could be useful in alleviating severe depression in patients who have had little success with more traditional drugs. Though ketamine hasn't been approved by the FDA, Bloomberg discusses multiple studies and real-life anecdotes that seem to indicate that ketamine "works by producing long-lasting changes in the brain, reversing neural damage caused by stress and depression, and potentially decreasing inflammation and cortisol levels." Furthermore, while traditional medication can take weeks or even months to take effect, many patients who receive ketamine infusions feel some relief in mere hours.
"It was the moment of my life," Dennis Hartman, who had already scheduled his suicide when he decided to try ketamine infusions, told Bloomberg. "Within a few hours I could tell that my anxiety and depression were completely gone for the first time in my memory."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
While the drug undoubtedly comes with risks and doesn't work for everyone, clinics are popping up across the nation and companies are working to develop what Bloomberg says would be "similar, patentable drugs." "When it works," New Jersey psychiatrist Steven Levine told Bloomberg, "it's tremendous, it's wonderful."
Read the story in full at Bloomberg.
-
‘Businesses that lose money and are uncompetitive won’t survive’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Film reviews: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Frankenstein, and Blue MoonFeature A rock star on the rise turns inward, a stressed mother begins to unravel, and more
-
Podcast reviews: ‘Fela Kuti: Fear No Man,’ ‘David Bowie: Changeling’ and ‘The Adam Friedland Show’feature Fela Kuti’s revolutionary life, David Bowie’s early years, and Adam Friedland reinvents the talk show
-
FDA OKs generic abortion pill, riling the rightSpeed Read The drug in question is a generic version of mifepristone, used to carry out two-thirds of US abortions
-
RFK Jr. vaccine panel advises restricting MMRV shotSpeed Read The committee voted to restrict access to a childhood vaccine against chickenpox
-
Texas declares end to measles outbreakSpeed Read The vaccine-preventable disease is still spreading in neighboring states, Mexico and Canada
-
RFK Jr. shuts down mRNA vaccine funding at agencySpeed Read The decision canceled or modified 22 projects, primarily for work on vaccines and therapeutics for respiratory viruses
-
Measles cases surge to 33-year highSpeed Read The infection was declared eliminated from the US in 2000 but has seen a resurgence amid vaccine hesitancy
-
Kennedy's vaccine panel signals skepticism, changeSpeed Read RFK Jr.'s new vaccine advisory board intends to make changes to the decades-old US immunization system
-
Kennedy ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory panelspeed read Health Secretary RFK Jr. is a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has criticized the panel of experts
-
RFK Jr. scraps Covid shots for pregnant women, kidsSpeed Read The Health Secretary announced a policy change without informing CDC officials
