Getting the Inside Dope on Ketamine’s Mysterious Ability to Rapidly Relieve Depression

In the article Getting the Inside Dope on Ketamine’s Mysterious Ability to Rapidly Relieve Depression by Simon Makin, he opens with, “Ketamine has been called the biggest thing to happen to psychiatry in 50 years…” The article discusses how researches don’t yet completely understand how the drug Ketamine can improve depression symptoms in as little as 30 minutes, but other known anti-depressants take weeks or even months.

The article goes on about how ketamine early on started being abused like most drugs and it is known to cause hallucinations, out-of-body experiences and other effects and its anti-depressant properties weren’t discovered until about 20 years later. Researchers have found that ketamine does not influence mood like other ant-depressants, but it actually affects the brain by blocking depression from entering the lateral habenula (LHb). LHb is what activates when your expectations are not met or you are disappointed.

Tests were ran on lab rats that showed depression like behavior where they discovered distinctive patterns of rapid bursts of LHb. They injected ketamine into these lab rats and saw strong anti-depressant effects, they also found that the drug blocks NMDA receptors. They have also ran more tests on the affects of ketamine which have led to positive but not conclusive results. Researchers are still trying to figure out how exactly ketamine works so well as an anti-depressant.

The reason this article interested me is because depression is so prevalent in our world today, many around us can suffer from extreme depression without us even knowing. Many of are friends and family could be suffering from it right now and we can be absolutely clueless that they are. When people with depression aren’t helped it can lead them to do all kinds of things just to make them feel like someone cares, like self-harm, suicide or even hurting others.

I’m so glad that they are discovering drugs like ketamine that might be able to better help people who suffer from depression. Discoveries like these will save many lives and help the world in so many ways. I hope that they continue to discover more about ketamine and that they will eventually be able to safely administer it to everyone who needs help overcoming their depression.

-Daniel Adams

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/getting-the-inside-dope-on-ketamine-rsquo-s-mysterious-ability-to-rapidly-relieve-depression/