Jayne believed in being realistic. She didn’t notice that her “realistic” outlook leaned toward pessimism. When someone said, “Don’t be such a pessimist!” she would respond, “My realistic outlook has served me well.” She didn’t want her head in the clouds. When something bad happened, she thought about how it was punishment of her for her failures. The more she thought about it, the more hopeless and worthless she felt. Eventually, she felt like she was drowning in her own worthlessness …and that there was no hope of improvement. This wasn’t realism, it was pessimism and hopelessness. Self flogging. Despair. Jayne had no idea she could actually promote optimism and slash depression with the help of IV ketamine.
When things were difficult, Jayne would spiral in her thoughts about her own failures. She felt she would never be able to create solutions because of her own worthlessness. Surely her family would be much better off if she were gone. She felt like a dead weight they had to carry. She could see no value in herself. Her focus on her failures —rather than understanding the wonderful value she had to those who loved her — blinded her.
Her husband, Ben, read about IV ketamine treatment in a magazine. He decided to research it more deeply on his laptop. He learned it could dispel hopelessness and replace it with hope and a bright outlook.
Ben talked to Jayne about it at length, and she agreed to meet with a doctor who could give her IV ketamine treatment. She understood there would be at least 6 infusions, maybe more.
Her thoughts of suicide dissipated after the first treatment. That was a relief. After the second treatment, she began to feel initiative. She got things done. It made her feel better about herself. After the third, hope began to seep in. By the time she had her 7th infusion, she felt joy and pleasure…and began to believe in herself. Her outlook was surprisingly optimistic, after years of pessimism.
Jayne was so grateful to her husband for seeking answers and finding a treatment she didn’t realize she needed. She felt transformed.
Worthlessness, hopelessness, and pessimism are negative beliefs that characterize major depressive disorder and the depression that is part of bipolar disorder. These beliefs and feelings color the outlook and perception, and influence the way you interpret experiences and events in your life.
They cause a negative view of yourself, everyone around you, and your future. Healthy people tend to have a stubbornly optimistic view of life. There is a stark contrast between the two.
Beliefs about the likelihood of future outcomes are regularly “updated” after new and interesting experiences. This most often happens after a positive experience in healthy people, and most often occurs after a negative experience in depressed people.
These updating experiences change the way they expect a new situation will turn out. If he’s healthy, he’s most likely to expect good things to follow. But if he’s depressed, he’s likely to ignore positive updating experiences and overfocus on negative ones. He’s likely to derive a pessimistic view and just expect that bad things that continue to happen.
This way of looking at life tends to maintain depressive symptoms, just as a healthy outlook serves to maintain optimism.
IV ketamine has demonstrated a rapid antidepressant effect that peaks in 24 hours. It promotes optimism and slashes depression.
We know that ketamine alters the belief updating process. It alters the mechanism you use to update your beliefs when exposed to new experiences and information. This is what happens in healthy people.
But if you have treatment resistant depression, it hasn’t been so clear when and how ketamine can impact your belief updating, and it’s important that we understand that.
So a team led by Hugo Bottamanne, M.D. conducted an incredibly elegant study recently to show how IV ketamine affects belief-updating. Because if ketamine can shift belief-updating to be more positive than negative in patients with treatment resistant depression, it can prolong a healthy outlook. Published in JAMA Psychiatry September 2022, the study worked with 26 patients with treatment resistant depression, and 30 who were healthy, who served as the control group.
The participants received three ketamine infusions and during this treatment period, they were asked to make educated guesses as to the likelihood they’d experience certain adverse events. The details of it all are quite complex.
If they expected it was likely that a catastrophe would happen to them, they had a pessimistic outlook. (Of course, right?) If they expected it was unlilkely a catastrophe would happen to them, they had a more optimistic outlook. (At baseline, they expected the worst.)
Belief Updating Goes Positive
But even after just one ketamine infusion, the depressed participants showed a strong shift in their thinking from pessimistic to optimistic. Their natural depression-related bias (leaning more towards the negative) actually shifted towards imagining positive outcomes in a significant and measurable way. One treatment. This accounts, in part, for why they started to feel better within just 4 hours of their infusion.
It just happened. Without trying too hard. Without having to work at reframing anything.
Just like it happens in our own patients.
It’s so exciting to see this studied in such a careful way, because it underscores and begins to explain how it is you can actually feel your depression lift. It’s because, in part, your thinking automatically changes and you lean in more towards the positive.
Ketamine promotes optimistic thinking…and hope. The mechanisms that promote pessimistic, depressed, and hopeless thinking can be reversed by ketamine.
Don’t just take my word for it (although I say it all the time). This latest research now shows it. We are all about bringing you innovative treatments, and helping you understand the brain science, the mechanisms, and the evidence base that underlies them. So that you can change your mind.
For the better.
The way you think has a strong impact on your outlook and state of mind. Ketamine can instill hope and a positive outlook for the future.
If you feel your realistic thinking (or, let’s just say, your pessimistic thinking) is contributing to depression, and if nothing has helped, call us.
IV ketamine can promote optimism and slash depression, giving you hope and joy for the future.
We want to help you experience how bright your life can be.
To the restoration of your best self,
