Ketamine medication is continuously gaining ground as an effective treatment for major depression disorders, which is a leading cause of mental disability globally. In the United States, statistics reveal that around sixteen million adults experience major depression episodes annually. Depression can adversely affect your daily life, disturb your sleep and even give you suicidal thoughts. Fortunately, Cordova ketamine can help to prevent suicidal cases and relieve other symptoms of depression. Ketamine can help in depression cases resistant to other antidepressant medications. Here is everything you need to know about ketamine for depression.
What Is Ketamine?
Ketamine was discovered in Belgium in the 1960s, where it was used as anesthesia for animals. The FDA approved the drug for human anesthetic use in 1970. It was used to treat injured soldiers in the Vietnam war. Later on, ketamine was discovered to have potent effects against suicidal thoughts and depression. The treatment involves the intravenous infusion of ketamine into a depressed patient. Ketamine can also be administered as a nasal spray.
How Does Ketamine Work?
It is not completely understood how ketamine works. As it provides an antidepressant effect via a new mechanism, ketamine can successfully help manage depression when other treatments are not working. Depressed individuals have few brains synapses connections that enable nerve cells to receive communication signals. The ketamine infusion works by developing new brain synapses that help to improve your mood positively.
One of the potential targets for ketamine is NMDA receptors in the brain. It binds to the receptors, increasing glutamate levels and activating the AMPA receptors. This action positively affects thought patterns, mood, and cognition. Generally, ketamine acts in various ways simultaneously, most of which are in ongoing studies.
What Type of Depression Is Treatable with Ketamine?
Ketamine infusions have been proven to produce significant clinical relief for patients with depressive disorders and bipolar depression. It can be used as an effective treatment for OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other conditions related to depression and anxiety-related disorders.
Ketamine is a fast-acting medication, making it an effective tool against suicidal ideation. For example, people addicted to drugs often get suicidal ideation. Ketamine infusions act fast to temporarily block those suicidal thoughts, which gives you more time to seek substance abuse treatment.
Should You Continue with Other Treatments When Undertaking Ketamine Injection?
Medical experts do not recommend ketamine as a single therapy for depression. Instead, it is often recommended to undertake ketamine to help relieve depressive symptoms as you continue undertaking comprehensive treatment such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). This psychotherapy treatment aims to identify behaviors and thought patterns to counter their effects. Managing depression during the treatment course can motivate you to overcome it.
Ultimately, depression is a mental disorder that comes with overwhelming effects. Ketamine offers a valuable tool to doctors in their treatment of depression. However, it is important to note that it is not a first-line treatment option for depression. It provides new hope for patients that had never got help before. It is prescribed for individuals with mild to severe depressive disorder for whom two or more depression medications have not helped.