Essential Reading
Scientific literature about ketamine and ketamine therapy
A qualitative study of patients' experience of ketamine treatment for depression: The ‘Ketamine and me’ project
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.
Rapid antidepressant effects of repeated doses of ketamine compared with electroconvulsive therapy in hospitalized patients with major depressive 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.
Antidepressant efficacy of ketamine in treatment-resistant major depression: a two-site randomized controlled trial
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.