Background: Acute suicidality is an emergency psychiatric condition that requires urgent treatment. Traditional treatment approaches, such as antidepressant pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, take weeks to achieve optimal effectiveness, hence exposing patients in imminent crisis to significant risk. Ketamine is a fast-acting N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist that has been...
Ketamine is an N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist that has antidepressant and antisuicidal effects, as shown by multiple studies done over the past two decades, that can be used effectively in the management of treatment-resistant depression (TRD). The United States Food and Drug Administration has approved intranasal (S)-ketamine in combination with an oral antidepressant for TRD....
OBJECTIVE: Ketamine, a glutamate N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, has shown rapid antidepressant effects, but small study groups and inadequate control conditions in prior studies have precluded a definitive conclusion. The authors evaluated the rapid antidepressant efficacy of ketamine in a large group of patients with treatment-resistant major depression. METHOD: This was a...