Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP): Patient Demographics, Clinical Data and Outcomes in Three Large Practices Administering Ketamine with Psychotherapy

Abstract

Currently, ketamine is the only legal psychedelic medicine available to mental health providers for the treatment of emotional suffering. Over the past several years, ketamine has come into psychiatric use as an intervention for treatment resistant depression (TRD), administered intravenously without a psychotherapeutic component. In these settings, ketamine's psychedelic effects are viewed as undesirable "side effects." In contrast, we believe ketamine can benefit patients with a wide variety of diagnoses when administered with psychotherapy and using its psychedelic properties without need for intravenous (IV) access. Its proven safety over decades of use makes it ideal for office and supervised at-home use. The unique experience that ketamine facilitates with its biological, experiential, and psychological impacts has been tailored to optimize office-based treatment evolving into a method that we call Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP). This article is the first to explore KAP within an analytical framework examining three distinct practices that use similar methods. Here, we present demographic and outcome data from 235 patients. Our findings suggest that KAP is an effective method for decreasing depression and anxiety in a private practice setting, especially for older patients and those with severe symptom burden.

Encoding, Consolidation, and Renormalization in Depression: Synaptic Homeostasis, Plasticity, and Sleep Integrate Rapid Antidepressant Effects

“…In this context, examining the principles of ENCORE-D together with previously proposed theoretical perspectives, such as the entropic brain hypothesis (Carhart-Harris et al, 2014) and the relaxed beliefs under psychedelics framework (Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2019), may turn out to be particularly fruitful. These emerging perspectives also encourage further research into both ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (Dore et al, 2019) and the impact of subjective experience on the therapeutic outcome.…”

The Past and Future of Psychedelic Science: An Introduction to This Issue

“…The data also encourage further research into the efficacy of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for a variety of psychiatric diagnoses including depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Dore et al 2019). It is important to stress, particularly given the availability of ketamine within the clinical, therapeutic space, that while ketamine administration may be sufficient to relieve some kinds of symptoms, the combination of the drug with psychotherapy might produce lasting changes.…”

“…It is one of only two injected general anesthetics included in the World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines (World Health Organization 2017). Additionally, ketamine has demonstrated incredible potential as a rapid, highly effective antidepressant (Hayley and Litteljohn 2013), and its antidepressant function is believed to be the result of its antagonism of NMDA receptors, and the resulting impact on neuroplasticity (Dore et al 2019).…”

“…Unlike MDMA and psilocybin, ketamine is a legal psychedelic medicine used for anesthesia (Dore et al 2019). It is currently the only psychedelic drug legally available to mental health providers in the US.…”

“…Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is growing rapidly among practitioners. This recognition comes just in time as KAP is proving largely to be an effective, ground-breaking treatment (Dore et al 2019).…”