Jayesh Kamath, MD, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut in Mansfield, said that use of ketamine as a treatment for mental health is "revolutionary for [the field of psychiatry]," CT Insider reported May 22.
There are clinics that currently use intravenously-administered ketamine as a depression treatment, though it is considered off-label.
In 2009, the FDA approved esketamine, a nasal spray developed from ketamine, to be used in conjunction with an oral antidepressant for patients with treatment-resistant depression. The esketamine works almost immediately.
However, ketamine has addictive properties with unregulated use, due to its dissociative and hallucinative properties that include euphoria.
Dr. Kamath argues that the side effects may be worth it for patients who have struggled with a lifetime of severe depression, considering it works within days or hours, compared to antidepressants that take four to six weeks to work, or may not work for a particular patient at all.
"[If] they're on multiple medications, and still sometimes end up in the hospital, if a person like that gets better with the medication, even with some dissociative effects, and stays better, can come off of their medications, no hospitalizations and a good level of functioning?" he told CT Insider.
Dr. Kamath and his team at the University of Connecticut are conducting studies to create compounds of esketamine that don't have any hallucinative properties.