Depression is the third-leading cause of disability worldwide. Even if successfully treated, however, 80 percent of patients will relapse in the five years following remission. Over 30 percent will fail to respond to at least two antidepressant treatments, and be diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression.
Ketamine, meanwhile, was first used in clinical practice in the 1960s as a safer alternative to the anesthetic phencyclidine (PCP), which has been discontinued in the U.S. due to the high incidence of postoperative delirium with hallucinations. In 1970, the FDA approved ketamine as a general anesthetic, and today it resides on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines. But research on ketamine’s antidepressant effects has only taken off in the last couple decades.
This article, published in smithsonianmag.com shows how the drug’s initial successes have upended what many neuroscientists know about the brain and mental illness.
