The psychiatrist argues that "it would be important to expand this offer in the NHS, in places where there are professionals trained to manage this type of case, in order to reach a specific type of population".
Público, November 21, 2023
Author: Amílcar Correia
The results of treatment with ketamine [or ketamine] of patients with resistant depression at the Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Lisboa show that symptoms were reduced in 70% of cases. In a slightly lower proportion, 60% of the sample, the symptoms that persisted were no longer sufficient for a diagnosis of depression. What's more, three months after completing the treatment, half of the people still had no signs of depression.
Let's break it down. Ketamine began to be used as an anesthetic drug in the 1960s, but, as many people reported when they woke up, it was soon realized that it caused strange and intense dreams. The drug was later used in Russia as a model for psychedelic-assisted therapy. The experiment didn't last long. Psychedelics were banned from the country. It was in this century that the "reinterest in ketamine as a rapid antidepressant" emerged, explains Pedro Castro Rodrigues, coordinator of the Depression Resistant Unit at the hospital.
This unit began treatment with ketamine a year ago with a group of 12 people who were diagnosed with resistant depression [...]. What happens, as Pedro Castro Rodrigues, together with Miriam Mergulho and Inês Figueiredo, wrote in a scientific article published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, is that this drug increases neuroplasticity, i.e. the brain's ability to establish new neuronal connections, which makes it more "modelable" the next day and increases the likelihood that psychotherapy will be successful. [...]
Basically, the apparent success stems from this combination of increased neuroplasticity and the release of more rigid patterns, in an appropriate context and monitoring, "which favors psychotherapeutic intervention".
