Ketamine offers lifeline for people with severe depression, suicidal thoughts
Courtesy : Driftxposa
By Ben Tinker and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN
Updated at 1236 GMT (2036 HKT) August 4, 2018
- Ketamine is a powerful anesthetic medication used in hospitals
- Scientific studies show promise in treating severe depression
Mount Horeb, Wisconsin (CNN)— A few months ago, Alan Ferguson decided he was ready to die -- for the third time. In 2014, he attempted suicide twice, and the persistent thoughts of "I need to be dead" were echoing in his brain once again.
Now 54 years old, Ferguson was diagnosed with clinical depressionwhen he was 18. Since then, he estimates, he's been prescribed more than a dozen medications -- SSRIs, SNRIs, tricyclic antidepressants -- all to little or no avail.
"I never got to the point that I thought, 'OK, I'm feeling good,' " he said. "It was always, 'OK, this is tolerable.' But yet those thoughts [of wanting to die] were still there."
If you suspect someone may be suicidal:
1. Do not leave the person alone.
2. Remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt.
3. Call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
4. Take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
Source: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. For more tips and warning signs, click here.
In early May, Ferguson abruptly stopped taking all of his medications, quit his job and gave away his dog, Zeke. That evening, he called his sister, Linda.
"It was a very good conversation," he said. "Linda and I disagree on a lot of stuff, and that night I avoided the hot-button topics because I did not want her to have bad memories or bad thoughts of what I thought was going to end up being our last conversation."
As luck or fate or professional intuition would have it, on a prescheduled call the very next day, Ferguson's psychiatrist offered to refer him to a ketamine clinic in Milwaukee, about an hour and a half from his home.
Ketamine is a powerful medication used in hospitals primarily as an anesthetic, but recent scientific studies have shown significant promise with treatment-resistant depression and suicidal ideation.
Ketamine is also used recreationally, and illegally, as a club drug known as "Special K." It generates an intense high and dissociative effects.
"I knew of the drug from having been a police officer, so I knew of its street use -- illicit use -- but I'm a pretty open-minded person too, and after all the traditional medications I've been on with no success, I thought, 'Well, maybe they're on to something here with this,' " Ferguson said. "I wasn't worried about trying something I had never tried before. I was worried about trying something else that wasn't going to work."
A last hope
Ferguson put off his plans to end his life for another week and made his way to Ketamine Milwaukee. The clinic operates once a week, on Fridays, in a space subleased from a weight-loss clinic in a nondescript strip mall just outside the city
Related Article: Party drug ketamine closer to approval for depression
Dr. Kevin Kane, a practicing anesthesiologist, is Ketamine Milwaukee's medical director. Referring to the fact that there haven't been any new classes of drugs developed to treat depression in decades, Kane said that using ketamine to successfully treat the disorder's most stubborn cases might just be "the biggest breakthrough in mental health in the last 50 years." He estimates that it is effective for 70% of patients with treatment-resistant depression.
"It's indicated right now for ... somebody who has tried and failed at least two medications, but that's really not who we're seeing," Kane said. Instead, the patients who seek his care have tried more medications than they can count. Some of them have been depressed for as long as they can remember.
"The people we're seeing aren't walking off the street because [they're] feeling a little down," he said. "They've been struggling without relief for a long time."
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