Bipolar disorder (BD) is a psychiatric illness associated with high morbidity, mortality and suicide rate. It has neuroprogressive course and a high rate of treatment resistance. Hence, there is an unquestionable need for new BD treatment strategies. Ketamine appears to have rapid antidepressive and antisuicidal effects. Since most of the available studies concern unipolar depression, here we present a novel insight arguing that ketamine might be a promising treatment for bipolar disorder.

This study showed that ketamine is as effective as ECT in improving depressive symptoms in MDD patients and have more rapid antidepressant effects compared with the ECT.

Ketamine demonstrated rapid antidepressant effects in an optimized study design, further supporting NMDA receptor modulation as a novel mechanism for accelerated improvement in severe and chronic forms of depression. More information on response durability and safety is required before implementation in clinical practice.

Ketamine has a robust and rapid effect on depression, which was seen immediately after the administration of ketamine and sustained at the end of 1 month.