Do you battle negative thoughts on a daily basis? You are not alone. In 2020 alone, 45,979 lives were loseed to suicide alone, and is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, with about one suicide occurring every eleven minutes.
Ketamine has proven effective in treating suicidal ideation and other mood disorders, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, OCD, and bipolar disorder.
Unlike many traditional medications for suicidal ideation, like SSRIs, which can take months to start working, ketamine therapy offers patients relief quickly, with some individuals reporting relief within a few hours of their first infusion session.
Recent evidence points to ketamine’s inhibitory effects on the NMDA receptor in the lateral habenula. The lateral habenula is a brain region primarily responsible for encoding negative rewards or anti-reward cause-and-effect relationships. Those with suicidal show an overactivity of burst firing in the lateral habenula. As a non-competitive NMDA antagonist, ketamine prevents glutamate from activating the NMDA receptor.
The inhibition of the NMDA receptor may cause a build-up of free glutamate, which then activates the AMPA receptors. When surplus glutamate activates the AMPA receptor, it releases a brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) chemical. BDNF, in interaction with the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), promotes new neural growth. This new growth may reroute the brain from hyperactive areas associated with negative reward signals, providing long-term relief from suicidal ideation.
Suicidal tendenciesshould not be taken lightly. If this is an emergency, PLEASE CALL 988 NOW!
If you have been dealing with suicidal thought for a long period of time and other medications and therapies have failed to help, then you might be a good candidate for ketamine treatment for suicidal ideation. Ketamine has shown to have a positive impact on suicdial patients. A single infusion of ketamine may have a short-term beneficial impact on suicidal thoughts.
