Author: SAPO Digital Studio
Sapo, June 17, 2024
[Image taken from article: Freepik]
In Lisbon, The Clinic of Change has been committed for the last year to an innovative treatment that alleviates the suffering associated with depression, anxiety, burnout, addictions and post-traumatic stress. At this clinic, Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy has a "70% success rate where before there was a 100% failure rate", as clinical director Victor Amorim Rodrigues confirms. Now, The Clinic of Change is expanding its services and offering a comprehensive view of patients and an innovative ketamine treatment, effective in moderate to severe depressive disorders.
For the past year, world-renowned specialists have been joining a national and international clinical body in an innovative mental health treatment that is being provided in our country under the tutelage of The Clinic of Change.
It is a reference clinic for its specialized program in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapya psychotherapy that works with anxiety disorders (including burnout syndrome and nervous exhaustion), addiction, post-traumatic stress and eating disorders, as well as addictions such as alcohol. All these conditions often have in common an experience of trauma or adversity in the past.
This methodology is scientifically rigorous. In other words, it complies with scientific research protocols developed in partnership with reputable institutions. Examples include Imperial College London, the University of Exeter, the British National Health Service and the Portuguese National Health Service.
ISBE - Instituto de Saúde Baseada na Evidência and ISPA - Instituto Universitário de Ciências Psicológicas, Sociais e da Vida.
In this article we will look at how, in three dimensions, The Clinic of Change is leading innovation in mental health therapies.
1. A global approach
The team at The Clinic of Change knows that mental health needs are enormous and that, more than illnesses, there are patients with their own singularities and life stories. As such, The Clinic of Change's vision is growing towards a global approach, "in that it is integral, it is complete, it is comprehensive," explains Victor Amorim Rodrigues, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and clinical director of The Clinic of Change.
"We increasingly want to have an approach that allows us to customize a therapeutic plan for each patient, what the Americans call tailoring," says the psychiatrist. In essence, the concept of tailoring presupposes that nothing is immobile or fixed.
At any given moment, we need to be able to redesign a plan according to each individual's specific case. "In this sense, a personalized therapeutic program is designed for each individual. The diagnosis differs from person to person. Family therapy may be necessary, in other cases the biological factor is important and the appropriate psychopharmacology must be found, in certain cases the problem may have its origins in personality issues, so more in-depth psychological work must be done. All this with different therapeutic responses. For example, various types of psychotherapy, previously discussed in a clinical meeting and then proposed to the patient. We have a multidisciplinary team, and every contribution is important."
In order to achieve these goals, The Clinic of Change plans to grow its team and diversify its skills. Above all, the ultimate goal is to offer patients all the solutions that are considered "State of the Art" in mental health and psychiatry on a global scale.
2. Treatment with ketamine. An innovative path
In the context of this global approach and in view of its openness to innovations in the field of mental health, The Clinic of Change is one of the first entities in Portugal to offer treatment with scetamine.
This innovative drug has been approved for on-label use by the American, European and Portuguese health agencies and will work as a complement to Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy programs, increasing the possibilities of responding to patients' problems.
"The Clinic of Change is open to new answers. And one of them may in fact be scetaminebut with very precise indications, such as depressive states that are resistant to other therapeutic modalities and have a prolonged evolution, which lead to people having very complicated conditions, some even at risk of suicide. The application of scetamine will make a big difference," says Victor Amorim Rodrigues.
3. What is Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy and how does it work?
Ketamine (or ketamine) is used daily in hospital emergency units all over the world as an effective and safe anesthetic agent for performing brief surgical procedures.
More recently scientific evidenceevidence has revealed that, in very low doses, ketamine has antidepressant properties and promotes a state of heightened awareness. In a clinical context, the drugs used are unadulterated, well-dosed and the patients are closely monitored before, during and after the sessions, making the psychotherapeutic program very safe, with the patients accompanied and monitored by a specialized clinical team throughout the process. All treatment is supervised and monitored by psychiatrists. In addition, each case is assessed by the medical team at the outset, focusing on the person's clinical history so that a correct assessment can be made of the therapeutic approach to be followed.
In Portugal, ketamine is currently licensed for anesthesia and also for certain psychiatric conditions. It is in this context that Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy was born at The Clinic of Change.
Testimonies from people who have actually seen their lives change for the better
"Fundamentally, our main emphasis is on psychotherapy, but a psychotherapy that is assisted or facilitated by a drug, in this case ketamine, which will allow access to a set of psychological and psychic material, psychic contents, which in turn can be worked on in psychotherapy," emphasizes Victor Amorim Rodrigues.
He added: "Although we also have all the antidepressant benefits of the drug, we really strive for psychotherapeutic work in order to prolong the therapeutic effects of this treatment in the long term. What is needed is trained psychotherapists, as we have here, with many years of experience, to be able to work with this material."
In practice, this psychotherapy can help people adopt more flexible ways of thinking and acting. With the help of psychotherapy, it is important to be able to put these new learnings and insights into practice in daily life in order to maintain the benefits.
Benefits that are evident in testimonies such as that of CarlaCarla was tired of the anxiety and depression that wouldn't let her go. There were too many sick days, too many medications, too many years of living in a numb state and eating to compensate for her emotions. "Right now, I wake up every morning and all I say is: 'Let's live'," she confides after successfully joining The Clinic of Change's Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy program.
Mitigating suffering
"We've had people in great pain here for many years, some for more than 20 years, others since they were teenagers, where what have in fact been the traditional methods of psychiatry and mental health in general haven't worked," emphasizes Victor Amorim Rodrigues, adding that it's motivating "to see people who sometimes smile the next day. People who hadn't smiled for years, and who came in crying. And the improvement from session to session in some people is very evident, and the people themselves are very enthusiastic, because they see that they are actually at another level of mental, relational and cerebral functioning."
Without hiding his satisfaction, the psychiatrist adds: "We have a 70% success rate where before there was a 100% failure rate."
A success that Alexandre experienced. Alexandre had already tried everything, from hospitalization to hypnosis, to try to free himself from what brought him to the bottom of the pit, "the disease of alcoholism", as he calls it. About to lose what he loves most, his family, it was his wife who found what he considers his "salvation": the Change Kare Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy Program at The Clinic of Change: "Today I am free of alcohol, I have recovered my family, my sanity, my joy of living. And how good it is to live".
For Victor Amorim Rodrigues, as a doctor, what sparked his interest in this type of treatment "was the possibility of being able to help people I couldn't help otherwise. Whether from a more psychopharmacological or psychotherapeutic point of view, I know perfectly well, as all clinicians in this field know, that there is a group of patients, not so negligible as that, who don't have effective responses."
The return is in words of hope like Isabel's. There were times when even to be home alone Isabel felt "a horrible panic". She has suffered from agoraphobia since she was very young and the pandemic, with its empty streets, made everything worse and caused her to regress in her treatment. In order to "try again and achieve more freedom", she opted for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. She feels, as she tells us, "a renewed genic" and, for the first time, she says that she has got to the root of her phobia and understood it: "It was more heartfelt, it was more from the inside, it was more honest with myself".
Take the opportunity to speak to a specialist at the clinic or book an appointment here.
Some patients have already tested this treatment and given their testimonials. You can consult it here.
