Study Suggests Ketamine May Ease Severe Depression, Suicidal Thoughts

The buzz around ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic drug, is booming. More and more research continues to suggest the drug has the potential to help people with severe mood disorders, including a new study that was just published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

For the study, researchers evaluated the drug’s effects in more than 400 people who received ketamine infusions in three unregulated private clinics in Virginia; people were paying for these treatments out of pocket and, on average, they received six infusions within 21 days. During each visit, the participants filled out surveys about their physical and mental well-being. The researchers found that 50% of people who were dealing with suicidal thoughts were in remission after six infusions, while 75% of them no longer experienced suicidal thoughts after 10 infusions. People also had a 30% reduction in anxiety symptoms within six weeks. The researchers note that the study is exciting because the findings shed some light on ketamine’s effectiveness in a “real-world” setting.

But the strongest studies on ketamine therapy—and other forms of psychedelic therapy—have been done in tightly-controlled research settings, often with the addition of talk therapy, for a valid reason. “This treatment really does offer hope to a lot of people and it is very promising,” Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and the director of the Yale Depression Research Program who was not directly involved in the new study, tells SELF. “But it really needs to be used with caution and responsibility,” he says, because there’s always a risk of worsening certain mental health conditions when ketamine isn’t used appropriately. Here’s how this new research is contributing to experts’ understanding of this controversial drug.

First, a little ketamine 101.

Ketamine is an anesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, which is why you’ve probably heard of it making the rounds at music festivals. It can also cause dissociation, a short-lived mental state in which people feel disconnected and detached from reality. Though ketamine has psychedelic properties, many experts don’t classify it as a genuine psychedelic because it impacts a different part of the brain compared to drugs like LSD, as SELF previously reported.

In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a nasal-spray medication derived from ketamine, esketamine, for treatment-resistant depression; no other form of ketamine is approved for the treatment of any mental health disorder. There’s a bit of a loophole, though. Ketamine is FDA-approved for general anesthesia, which means it’s legal to prescribe. Because of this, doctors are able to recommend ketamine “off-label” to people with severe mood disorders. This essentially means a health care provider prescribes an approved drug in a way that it wasn’t approved to be used, which is a relatively common practice even outside the world of psychedelic therapy.

A growing body of research is starting to back up ketamine’s potential.

Clinical study after clinical study has suggested ketamine, typically delivered via intravenous infusions, may help reduce depression, alleviate anxiety, and quell suicidal thoughts. “There is really strong evidence that it has a rapid onset of antidepressant effects that can be sustained with repeated dosing over time,” Dr. Sanacora explains.