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Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#61

Post by cies »

TTPrograms wrote: post #22

If you're an American, every time you read a new article on Ketamine for depression your thought should be "Jeese, healthcare is screwed up". Pharma companies don't benefit from getting Ketamine approved (since it's no longer patent protected), so no one is putting it through FDA for depression. As a result insurance will never cover it (under the current model). The reason this treatment isn't mainstream isn't becau…

Maybe Pineapple Fund can come to the rescue, they (he?) chipped in 4M to get MDMA through a clinical trial.

http://www.maps.org/news/media/7082-press-release-maps-compl...

I get the feeling this is not a Gates kind of philanthropist, lol.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#62

Post by sgift »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #35
pw wrote: post #7

My girlfriend receives ketamine treatment for her depression, so I’ve the results first hand. It’s truly astounding. She’s seen more improvement from the ketamine than from a decade of psychotherapy and traditional psychopharmacology. The only downside is the cost (it’s not covered by insurance) and the potential that there are long term side effects that have yet to be discovered. We pay $375 for a 40-minute infusio…

Doesn't ketamine stimulate growth in the same areas of the brain that exercise does, and does therapy prescribe routine daily exercise? I can imagine there being a great short term benefit to ketamine, as people who are severely depressed can't exercise due to the depression. Has there been any mention switching from ketamine to daily exercise, or doing both?

How often did you have depression? Especially major depressive episodes where you have trouble to even motivate yourself to move out of the bed or do ANYTHING but just "exist" and even that seems hard?

If the answer is zero (which I think it is) do those who have it a favor and shut up. Depression is hard enough without "you just have to exercise, huahua" comments.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#63

Post by arkades »

patricius wrote: post #49
TTPrograms wrote: post #22

If you're an American, every time you read a new article on Ketamine for depression your thought should be "Jeese, healthcare is screwed up". Pharma companies don't benefit from getting Ketamine approved (since it's no longer patent protected), so no one is putting it through FDA for depression. As a result insurance will never cover it (under the current model). The reason this treatment isn't mainstream isn't becau…

Getting a drug approved by the FDA is pretty expensive. Abolishing the FDA, thereby reducing the cost of introducing the drug, might be the real solution here.

I find public health inspectors also make it more expensive to run a restaurant. Perhaps the solution to their tight margins would be to abolish health inspections.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#64

Post by arkades »

mtgx wrote: post #54
TTPrograms wrote: post #22

If you're an American, every time you read a new article on Ketamine for depression your thought should be "Jeese, healthcare is screwed up". Pharma companies don't benefit from getting Ketamine approved (since it's no longer patent protected), so no one is putting it through FDA for depression. As a result insurance will never cover it (under the current model). The reason this treatment isn't mainstream isn't becau…

Same with Vitamin D, almost. If it were patent-protected, you'd probably get a big list of features promoted for an almost "miracle pill" that would probably cost a few dollars per pill. But Vitamin D is not patent protected and it's dirt cheap, so not only does Big Pharma have no interest in promoting it, but it would rather you take much more dangerous drugs and much more expensive drugs to cure the same things Vit…

VitD became a fad topic over a decade ago and has been studied endlessly since then.

This is a very odd comment thread. Lots of people criticizing our health system for not studying things it actually does study a lot.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#65

Post by sho »

sgift wrote: post #62
proverbialbunny wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't ketamine stimulate growth in the same areas of the brain that exercise does, and does therapy prescribe routine daily exercise? I can imagine there being a great short term benefit to ketamine, as people who are severely depressed can't exercise due to the depression. Has there been any mention switching from ketamine to daily exercise, or doing both?

How often did you have depression? Especially major depressive episodes where you have trouble to even motivate yourself to move out of the bed or do ANYTHING but just "exist" and even that seems hard? If the answer is zero (which I think it is) do those who have it a favor and shut up. Depression is hard enough without "you just have to exercise, huahua" comments.

While you are totally right, you could have phrased that a lot better, and don't tell people to shut up.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#66

Post by atomical »

anythingnonidin wrote: post #4

Main upsides of Ketamine for depression vs typical antidepressants (SSRIs, etc) - Ketamine seems to have a much larger effect size (-~0.99 [1] vs -~0.35 for typical antidepressants [2]) [If anyone spots an error, please let me know] For context, an SMD of 0.2 is small, >0.5 is medium, and >0.8 is large.[3] To me this seems to be by far the most important/interesting thing: Ketamine seems to have a much stronger antid…

It's expensive because doctors are using it to make a lot of money. The drug is cheap.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#67

Post by Fnoord »

arkades wrote: post #63
patricius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a drug approved by the FDA is pretty expensive. Abolishing the FDA, thereby reducing the cost of introducing the drug, might be the real solution here.

I find public health inspectors also make it more expensive to run a restaurant. Perhaps the solution to their tight margins would be to abolish health inspections.

While you're at it, tax makes it more difficult to run a business and making a living. Let us abolish tax as well.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#68

Post by patricius »

arkades wrote: post #63
patricius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a drug approved by the FDA is pretty expensive. Abolishing the FDA, thereby reducing the cost of introducing the drug, might be the real solution here.

I find public health inspectors also make it more expensive to run a restaurant. Perhaps the solution to their tight margins would be to abolish health inspections.

I agree

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#69

Post by Fnoord »

pw wrote: post #7

My girlfriend receives ketamine treatment for her depression, so I’ve the results first hand. It’s truly astounding. She’s seen more improvement from the ketamine than from a decade of psychotherapy and traditional psychopharmacology. The only downside is the cost (it’s not covered by insurance) and the potential that there are long term side effects that have yet to be discovered. We pay $375 for a 40-minute infusio…

Infusion? Goodness grace, I got belonephobia and got scared shitless there. It doesn't have to be administered intravenous. The article is mainly referring to a nasal spray.

Re: Ketamine has 'fast-acting benefits' for depression

#70

Post by unfunco »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #59
eip wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the bad long term effects of drugs can be attributed to impurities, which there should be next to nothing off when you get it from a doctor. Ketamine is sourced pretty much exclusively from pharmaceutical manufacturers and is medical grade.

It is normally cut with other shit though to bulk it out and get more profit.

Ketamine has such a distinctive appearance in solid form that cutting it with anything else is quite difficult. Ketamine is relatively clean in the United Kingdom compared with other illicit chemicals.
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