Can Ketamine treatment help with suicidal thoughts?

A small study has been conducted by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital that has shown repeated small doses of Ketamine could lessen the suicidal thoughts of people suffering from severe depression.

Low doses of ketamine were administered repeatedly to 14 patients through an intravenous drip who had been experiencing thoughts of suicide over the previous three months. Most of the group showed a decrease in suicidal thoughts while seven of them found to have no such thoughts at all during and after the treatment as reported in Medical Daily.

Lead author of the study and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dawn Ionescu, stated that this study was unique as no previous research had involved using Ketamine on patients currently dealing with suicidal thoughts and says that the results are promising in developing treatment for those suffering from life-threatening depression.

“We only studied intravenous ketamine, but this result opens the possibility for studying oral and intranasal doses, which may ease administration for patients in suicidal crises.”

The participants knew they were getting doses of Ketamine so the team are currently finishing up a second study that involves Ketamine and a placebo to further discover its role in the treatment. Ionescu hopes that the new findings will help towards a better understanding of the brain and how to target it for treatment in depression and potentially create better and more effective drugs.

“Looking towards the future, studies that aim to understand the mechanism by which ketamine and its metabolites work for people with suicidal thinking and depression may help us discover areas of the brain to target with new, even better therapeutic drugs.”

The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.