Can You Use Ketamine To Treat Depression?

As per a new research that studied the trends on the use of ketamine, a hallucinogenic drug for recreational purposes noted a rise in the US between 2015 to 2022. The study conducted by Kevin H Yang, Wayne Kepner. Charles M Cleland and Joseph J Palamar titled Trends and characteristics in ketamine use among US adults with and without depression, 2015–2022 noted that recreational ketamine use has increased in the United States in the recent year and has outpaced its rise as a treatment for depression.

What is Ketamine?

It is a hallucinogenic drug, and is a controlled substance designed for use as an aesthetics. It also has now been touted for its potential as a therapy for depression. Published in the Journal of Affective Disorders using the data from the 2015-2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the study drew its conclusion on the ketamine use among the US adults.

If ketamine rings bell for you, it is because it is the same drug, which, due to it being abused and overdosed, led to the death of Mathew Perry.

Is It Safe?

There are ways of giving people ketamine. One of the ways is through “infusing”, which means to use an IV drip. However, injections, nasal sprays and capsules are also methods used to give people ketamine.

Ruling Out Actor's Death By Ketamine Infusion Therapy: Since the dosage of ketamine used in the infusion treatment is small, it being the reason of actor Perry’s death was ruled out. The medical examiner also noted that Perry’s last ketamine infusion therapy session happened more than a week before his death, which means by the time he had died, it must have worn off.

What Did The Study Find?

Coming back to the study, it observed that in 2015, 0.11% of 214,500 survey respondents reported using ketamine, however by 2019, the percentage increased to 0.20, which, as an overall was an 81.8% increase. Between 2021 and 2022, its use as a recreational drug increased to 0.28%.

“This would translate to approximately 728,000 adults in the U.S. who used ketamine in the past year,” says Kevin Yang, a resident physician in the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry and the study’s first author.

Although the analysis focused on its recreational use and referenced ketamine with its street name as Special K or Super K, some survey respondents may have accessed the same in medical settings too.

However, the recreational use still lags when compared to use of marijuana. In 2022, 23% of National Survey on Drug Use and Health respondents 18 and older said they had used cannabis in the past.

Concerns

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) conducts an annual survey to collect nationally representative data on nonmedical drug use among U.S. adults. This survey gathers information about participants' drug use within the past year, collects demographic details, and identifies respondents who experienced a major depressive episode during the same timeframe.

As per the data, people between age 26 to 34, especially in college or higher educational institutions, and non-Hispanic White were likelier than other demographic to use ketamine. Those who reported the use of other drugs were also most-likely to use other drugs recreationally. The concern is also, if other drugs are used, it could also be ecstasy, MDMA, GHB, and opioid which had higher odds of ketamine use and could be concerning when abused.

The major cause of concern is using opioids with ketamine at the same time, which has a high risk of overdose and death.