Ketamine Treatment for Depression?

Doctors at the Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston, Texas, are testing the effect of ketamine as a treatment for people with severe depression. Classified as an hallucinogen, the drug can have a dissociative effect on the user meaning that there are feelings of being outside of the body – a feeling of detachment.

Ketamine is often described as ‘a horse tranquiliser’ although strictly speaking it should be described as a mammal tranquiliser as its use is far beyond horses. It is probably described as such because much ketamine available illicitly has been ‘diverted’ from veterinary supplies.

Ketamine is a fascinating and complex drug which gives different effects depending on the dosage. Ketamine is used on people in a&e and hospital settings where it provides an invaluable anaesthetic and analgesic effect for trauma patients.

The news that Ben Taub are planning to test the efficacy of ketamine as a treatment for depression in a strict clinical setting is very interesting especially as it follows on from the news last week about psilocybin (magic mushrooms) being investigated as a treatment for depression.

This highlights the fact that there is no such thing as an evil drug – no drug is evil in itself, it could be said that it is the illicit, chaotic or haphazard use of these powerful chemicals that has the potential for great harm to the user, their families and to the wider society in which they live

PMcD

Read the Daily Mail article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2094250/Ketamine-Club-drug-offer-instant-remedy-severe-depression.html#ixzz1l2bqnwI8

Psilocybin, Treatment for depression

Scientific experiments are planned that will investigate the efficacy of psilocybin as part of treatment for depression.  Psilocybin is the hallucinogenic chemical found in ‘magic mushrooms’.

It is reported that clinical trial could begin within a year after two studies showed how this chemical altered brain activity and function.  One of the studies (British Journal of Psychiatry), found that psilocybin enhanced memories associated with positive emotions and scans showed that the memory experience was very ”real” with increased brain activity in areas that process visual and other sensory information.

Professor Nutt (former chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD)) said that these findings were ”a revelation” adding:

”Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding’ drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas.

”These hubs constrain our experience of the world and keep it orderly. We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as strange.”

This is the first time that serious research has been carried out on the effects of hallucinogenic drugs and the possibility of their use in a medical setting for more than 50 years. Hallucinogens have come to be viewed as dangerous, evil drugs with the potential for enormous social harm.  Professor Nutt commented on this, saying:

”They got banned because they could be society changing,”

”There was great concern about that. Since then they’ve been virtually impossible to research.”

Link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9034669/Magic-mushrooms-could-treat-depression.html