How Ketamine Therapy Can Decrease Suicidal Thoughts

Ketamine therapy can help a patient with suicidal thoughts. Thinking about self-harm makes you a danger to yourself. Most cases need emergency treatments to stop this kind of thinking. If you want to know how ketamine therapy can reduce or stop thoughts of suicide, here are the details.

What ketamine is

Doctors often use ketamine in surgery as an anesthetic. This drug reduces pain without slowing down one’s respiration. It calms down the body by acting on the pain receptors right away. Studies show that this medication can help depression patients who do not improve with traditional treatments. These patients are suffering from treatment-resistant depression.

The way ketamine therapy helps suicidal patients

Suffering from severe depression often leads to thoughts of self-harm. This is not a simple symptom that passes. The suicidal thoughts linger in the patient’s mind until the patient acts on them. That is why this situation is an emergency. Traditional depression treatments take very long to take effect.

Antidepressants often take many weeks before the patient achieves the desired effect. People with strong suicidal thoughts will need ketamine therapy right away. It is a matter of surviving these thoughts. That is why a psychiatrist must give this drug.

Studies show that ketamine therapy can relieve the symptoms of severe depression within hours of having it. Low doses of ketamine can interrupt suicidal thoughts. This drug changes how the nerves channel signals. In other words, ketamine therapy changes the path for essential areas of the brain.

Research proves that ketamine can help reframe how a person sees things. This drug makes the person realize that everything will improve if the person stays alive. It makes the person look at the world in a more positive light. Ending the negative thoughts can help the person survive the emergency and not entertain suicidal thoughts anymore.

Administering ketamine therapy

Giving ketamine to the patient through the intravenous route is the quickest way to feel its effects. The patient will sit and stay comfortable in a relaxing treatment room. The psychiatrist or a member of the treatment team will attach an intravenous line to the patient’s arm. A member of the treatment team will regulate the flow. Keeping an eye on the patient’s reactions and vital signs is important.

The staff or psychiatrist will keep watching until the psychiatrist decides that the patient is ready to leave. There should be someone who will drive the patient home after the treatment. This is to ensure that the patient is okay when the treatment ends. Some assistance at home can also happen. The effects of ketamine therapy can last from seven days to two weeks after the treatment session.

How harmless ketamine therapy is

Ketamine therapy will be complete in 40-60 minutes. The patient can change the flow of ketamine. The psychiatrist can calculate the milligrams the patient needs. The computation will depend on the weight of the patient. The treatment team will keep watching the patient and see if the patient will experience the side effects of ketamine therapy:

• Moderate sedation
• Elevated blood pressure
• Increased heart rate