IV Ketamine for Teens ? Ya gotta be kidding me, right?

We’re not. We’re dead serious. We want to keep them alive.

Maybe you have a teen like the ones we see. Maybe you are are one… like the ones we see. Or maybe you’re quiet. Kind. Smart. Everybody’s friend. Absolutely gorgeous. An athlete. A contender. Someone who’s had it all. Or maybe you’re NOT any of that. Maybe you’re a worrier, shy, awkward. Maybe you feel like you’re always messing up, like no one wants to be with you, like no one knows how to help you. Like you’re lost. Like you just don’t get it. How everybody else is goofing around, laughing, having fun while you just sit there, wondering how it ever happened that things got so screwed up, and that you got so messed up. Know anybody like that? If you do, or if that is you–or your teen, or your sister, or your best friend–listen up. You’re in the right place. Because there is IV ketamine for teens.

Just when you think that nothing can help, know that we have help. We have the experience, and the guts and the compassion–and we had the foresight–to see the potential that ketamine infusions could offer adolescents who are just suffering.

We knew it years ago, when we first started using IV ketamine for treatment resistant depression. Then bipolar depression. Suicidal thoughts. We saw it, and decided to really look at what happened to real people (who always have 50 million things going on, not just one rarified condition or syndrome. We looked at our own patients, in our own practice. We wanted to look at our own numbers, the truth of who gets better, how many get better, what does it take– (in terms of ketamine) — how much? how often?

We stepped up, powered up, and wrote up a critical research report and published it in a peer reviewed journal about what happens for patients who come to see a psychiatrist to see if ketamine treatment can help–for their depression, it was back then–and find that it can stop hopelessness and suicidal thinking in an afternoon.

The thing is, we saw years ago it could help adolescents… Adolescents who weren’t just needing to take a pill to get better. These didn’t get better with one pill, or two…or a combination of several. And when they didn’t get better, it was said they had treatment resistant depression.

But treatment resistance is a funny thing. It used to be that it meant you’d tried 4 different meds, then it was dropped to 2 different meds, and now in this adolescent study, treatment resistance was defined as having been treated with one medication that didn’t work.

We’re glad that the requirement was just one failed medication trial before they were given the opportunity to be treated with IV ketamine.

Why?

Because so much is happening in a teen’s life and it’s happening so fast. They’re rate of growth is so intense that a day, a week, a month, of loss causes too much loss. And when there is no resolution found, time can fly by in years, and a teen loses a major block of development they never can get back.

IV ketamine for teens to put a stop to loss.

So what losses can they afford? To miss a month…or a semester…of high school? Or college?? To drop out of basketball? Lose friends? Teens often don’t have the patience and tenacity for a friend who just doesn’t show up. Or one who is always down. Defeated.

Adolescents need action. They need solutions that work quickly. They don’t have the time to wait for 4 different medicine trials that go on for weeks or months. There is just too much loss.

That’s why IV ketamine is so important.

When there’s no time to lose this is something that works fast.

How much can your kid afford to lose …how much can you afford to lose?

Hopefully we’ll able to have more and more data coming out so that our kids won’t have to suffer so long… so they get better faster. So we can treat them with what is most likely to work before trying something first that probably won’t.

We do the best we know in this profession. But we need more studies and more information. And until we have it…well, like I said, we do the best we know.

And we know this treatment has been in use to help adults of all ages for years. But what if you’re a teen? Teens get depressed, suffer social anxiety, even suffer from PTSD, suicidal thoughts, and bipolar depression. And when it’s treatment resistant, the unrelenting symptoms can interfere with your life, your development, and your hope. So we step forward and reach for IV ketamine for teens.

A study was just published about treating these kids with IV ketamine, to see if it was truly effective and safe…more about that coming up. But get this:

76% of this study group below had relief within 3 days of the ketamine infusion!

Imagine what that would mean to a teen who’s suffering, hopeless, and giving up.

So IV ketamine treatment has been effective in smashing those symptoms in thousands of people. But let’s look at this study especially for adolescents:

IV Ketamine for Teens

A team of researchers at Yale University led by Jennifer Dwyer, M.D., conducted a 4-week study using IV ketamine in teens with treatment-resistant depression recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. They selected 17 adolescents ages 13 to 17 who had been diagnosed  with major depressive disorder, or MDD. 

It’s a massive undertaking to find kids that don’t have 6 different things going on with them… a cluster of co-morbidities. Teens who have just one diagnosis are the only ones that fit into a study like this. Just finding the subjects for a study is hard.

Each teen in the group had been failed by at least 1 antidepressant medication treatment, but overall the average of failed treatments among the group was 3.24. (That’s a lot!–a lot of trials, a lot of weeks and months waiting for medications to help and being disappointed when they didn’t.) The average length of the current depression episode for these teens was 21 months. Almost two years. Too long.

This crossover study gave each teenager either IV ketamine 0.5mg/kg over 40mins, or IV midazolam 0.045mg/kg over 40 mins. 

Then 2 weeks later, each teen received an infusion of the other medicine. 

It’s important to understand that midazolam (which is from the Valium family) is often used as the “placebo” tested against ketamine because it provides an experience of deep relaxation, so at low doses it can be a bit difficult for the subjects to know which one they’re receiving. (Often, though, there are little clues and little differences between them so that they can tell.) But midazolam provides no antidepressant benefits.

It turned out that 76% of the adolescents experienced at least a 50% or greater antidepressant response within 3 days following their ketamine infusion.  (Compare this for a second: with an oral antidepressant, only 35% get 50% better….after 6-8 weeks.)

IV ketamine for teens prevents loss of important moments in their lives.

Were there side effects during the infusion in the study? Of course. But minor. For example, adolescents who had received ketamine experienced an increase in blood pressure compared to the midazolam infusion, but within a few hours those effects subsided.

Oh, the beauty of it.

When you’ve struggled and hidden in sullen isolation, sometimes for years… and you don’t know whether to search for a solution or hide, it’s so darn hard. You’ve missed class, missed practice…because it was too hard.

Until something happens… and you realize you only seem mad at others — and the world — because you feel so terrible.

Because you’re depressed.

And you also may be laboring under the weight of other disorders as well, like trauma, PTSD, OCD or social anxiety…ugghhhh. When all of these different symptoms or disorders cluster and tangle together, it’s so much harder to find relief.

Then, after months or years of searching for help, you learn about IV ketamine treatment. 

And you come back to yourself after treatment. Older and a bit wiser maybe, but joyful and creative again. Able to love again.

This is the beautiful story about how IV ketamine can transform adolescents…and can restore their hope.

For years, the use of ketamine treatment was up in the air. Respected doctors and neuroscientists were quick to offer their professional opinion… which was to wait. They said that ketamine had not been researched enough. There was not enough information to back it up…so they said.

But now we know that IV ketamine can transform adolescents, adults, and even children. It can erase suicidal thoughts, and give you … a teen… the time you need to get the help you need to see things differently. To redefine what life can be for you. To rebuild your hope. You purpose. And to restore the energy you need to build friendships that are strong and healthy.

We’ve waited a looong long time. Too long for some adolescents…

Even though we need more studies and more questions answered, we have to be willing to step up and take care of our kids who have everything on the line. For them it could be a matter of hope vs despair…life and death.

We live on that line all the time.

For all of us. We choose life. We need to choose it for our kids, too.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we find great joy in watching young promising people like you — who come to us without hope or confidence — tell us enthusiastically after their treatment how good they feel and how their life is getting better and better.

And because this process, this treatment, is so important, we took steps to make our office a safe place for you. We have technology that destroys viruses and all kinds of germs in the air and on surfaces, so you can feel safe and protected from infection of any kind. Whether it’s COVID-19 or influenza, or strep…it all dies immediately. So you can be in the safest possible environment during this pandemic and focus on your treatment and getting better.

If you’re an adolescent with symptoms of depression or anger, if you have tried antidepressants that haven’t helped, ask your Mom or Dad or someone who cares about you to call us.

We want you to find your joy again. To find your freedom and your hope.

We’re here to help.

To the restoration of your best self,