“FOR MANY, it was a huge, obvious effect,” says psychiatrist John Krystal. “One of the patients said, ‘Don’t give me those old medications, I want this again’.”
Krystal, a professor at Yale University, is talking about the time he gave seven severely depressed patients ketamine, a mind-blowing drug developed as an anaesthetic but better known as a club drug. It was a long shot, but the results were astonishing. Though most of the patients found the ketamine experience itself unpleasant, once it wore off they had a far better feeling: the disabling and suicidal depression they had lived with for years had vanished.
Krystal’s pioneering experiment happened in the late 1990s, but now researchers at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, have repeated the study and the results have got psychiatrists, neuroscientists and drug companies buzzing. An antidepressant that acts in hours rather than weeks would transform the treatment of depression, make a lot of money and change the way we understand the disease.
It’s not just depression. Other studies suggest that ketamine might act with similar speed to help addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and certain chronic pain conditions. Ketamine, researchers increasingly believe, may be a “reset button” for brains stuck in dysfunctional ruts.
Depression affects over 120 million people worldwide, making it the fourth largest contributor to the global burden of disease, according to the World Health Organization. At some point in their lives 13 per cent of Americans experience major depression, and globally 850,000 depressed people kill themselves every year.
Treatments are available, but they are slow to kick in and …
