Interesting article.. new findings treating bipolar depression with ketamine

http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/201...depression.htm

I thought you guys might find this article interesting when dealing with bipolar depression. I'm not sure what would become of this type of medication treatment. But the results of the findings do look a bit promising at least for a new treatment option.

Wow.......ketamine? That's a drug often used in surgical procedures, or at least it was when I was a medical/surgical nurse a few years ago. It's a heavy-duty sedative, so the exact mechanism of how it would help lift the depression, I don't know. But can you imagine the drop in the suicide rate that might happen if this became common practice AND worked as well as they say it does?

The trouble with most psych meds is that they take so damnably long to work, and when you're in crisis, four to six weeks is an ETERNITY. Even I, who have rarely been actively suicidal, almost came off the spool in March and was seriously considering chowing down on a bottle of Ativan.......and I'd just been put on Lamictal not even a week before. It's taken almost three months to see the light at the end of the tunnel, which for some time I half-hoped was an oncoming train.

That's way too long when you're in that dark, cold place where you can't even see past the end of your nose (and are too afraid to try). I hope the ketamine infusions work out to be a viable option.

I hope so too, I'm not sure how they would regulate this. They do still use it for surgery and as far as I know more so with children. My daughter had a double compound fracture in the summer and was given Ketamine so they could manipulate the bones back into place before she could have surgery. It worked well for her as far as not remembering the pain, she was awake but pretty dazed out and talking very strange. I know she felt the pain because of the screaming coming from the room. The surgeon told me that children respond well to Ketamine.

Now can you imagine having your depression lifted in one hour to a few days. I don't know what the side effects are, but I could see how if this is the case we could drastic improvement for suicide reduction and hospitalizations, disability ect.

It's good that research continues to address bipolar disorder, but I agree with you BipolaRNurse, a day is too long to endure without the right medication.

I remember reading about that and discussing about how "special k" did used to make you feel right with the world days after the party ended.

Very intriguing indeed. I'm curious to see how far this goes, such as so far as to a FDA approval at some point in the future.

There is a song about getting high off this called "Special K" by Placebo. It doesn't have anything to do with it, but I loved this song as a teenager not realizing what it was referring to.



This drug would be easy to abuse. If one is enough to reduce suicidal thoughts I would probably prescribe like 3-4 at a time and tell the patient to take one every 3/4 days in adjacent to something like lamital to give the other medication enough time to work. I think it works so well because you're essentially getting high and the high lasts a few days. I read the comments on Youtube and it said getting high on dxm (which is in most cough syrup) is almost the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine

The wiki is pretty useful, but there is a lot of jargon in it.

Yeah, thanks Confused. I'm wondering if it will ever meet approval because of it's abuse history. It's an injection so maybe they would give the injection at a clinic or hospital. That way reducing the abuse, even tho there would still be the potential right?

When my daughter was given Ketamine she was calling all the staff names from the Sponge Bob show, even tho she had not watched the show in years. She also was making stuff up about what was happening, she was definitely "high" but it seemed to only last about an hour before she started coming around and seeming like her normal self. It was a little weird for me, as she coul not stop laughing and was even being quite rude and a bit mean, totally unlike her.

I was at a conference recently and a speaker said they are working on trying to eliminate the hallucinatory aspect of ketamine. As long as that is present ketamine will only be given during a hospitalization.

I had 12 ketamine infusions at a an outpatient surgical center here in Pennsylvania this fall. I have severe bipolar 1 depressive episodes that have not responded to anything. I have attempt to take my life multilple times as well.
The treatments worked great!!! The drawback is after the initial 6 treatments I needed a maintenance treatment every 2 weeks to sustain the affects. I have great medical insurance but these are not covered. They run 400 dollars a treatment. I ran out of money and I am again dealing with depression.

It was great feeling life again. I can't wait for the new med in phase 3 clinical trials, that is based on the research from ketamine, comes out,

It will change life for a lot of us!