The Role of Ketamine in Depression
Mary S. Garner
Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) August 16, 2019 DOI: 10.17615/m7nw-fg52 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Depression Esketamine Ketamine |
| Keywords | Depression economics |
| Key findings | Ketamine infusions may help patients with refractory depression in the short-term with depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation. |
Abstract
Background: Introduction: The average person has up to 15% lifetime risk for developing depression. Major depressive disorder symptoms can include a depressed mood, such as feeling sad or having more anger than normal, changes in appetite, loss of interest in activities or hobbies, psychomotor agitation or retardation, loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, decreased ability to think or concentrate, sleep disturbance, an/or having suicidal thoughts. To make the diagnosis of major depressive disorder, according to the DSM-V, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders, a person must have at least 5 or more of these 9 symptoms during a continuous two-week period which causes significant impairment in functioning. Depression is treated in a variety of ways including medications and psychotherapy either as monotherapy or in tandem. When a patient has failed 2 or more medication treatments they are considered treatment resistant or as having refractory depression. Treatment resistant depression or refractory depression has several standard therapies, which include combination pharmacotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, vagal nerves stimulation and deep brain stimulation. Current research does support that a novel therapy, such as ketamine infusions, may help patients in the short-term with their depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation. The focus of this paper is to review the clinical trials involving ketamine use in refractory depression for the alleviation of depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation, and to examine the benefits, limitations, and future potential for ketamine as a treatment for refractory depression.
Comparable studies
Other narrative reviews on ketamine for depression, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Synthesizing the Evidence for Ketamine and Esketamine in Treatment-Resistant Depression: An International Expert Opinion on the Available Evidence and Implementation Adults with treatment-resistant depression | 2021 | Review | |
| Ketamine: a paradigm shift for depression research and treatment | 2019 | Review | |
| Rapid‐acting antidepressant ketamine, its metabolites and other candidates: A historical overview and future perspective | 2019 | Review | |
| Ketamine: A tale of two enantiomers | 2020 | Review | |
| Molecular mechanisms underlying the antidepressant actions of arketamine: beyond the NMDA receptor | 2021 | Review |