Did you know that about twenty-one million adults suffered at least one major depressive episode in 2020?
On top of that, about nine million U.S. adults are diagnosed with depression each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
And still, even after seeking help, almost three million of those adults do not respond to traditional antidepressant therapies.
In turn, these patients have been forced to turn to newer treatment options such as psychoactive drugs– in particular, ketamine.
Ketamine’s antidepressant effects were first studied and reported about two decades ago. And since then, intravenous ketamine treatments have gone from being offered at just academic medical centers to specialized practices throughout the country.
The drug was shown to help relieve depressive symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression.
And when administered and monitored by medical professionals, ketamine did not trigger drug dependency.
Still, the viable treatment option has many other limitations in terms of access and longevity. First of all, ketamine infusions are typically expensive and cost patients out-of-pocket.
Second, there are usually long wait lists for ketamine infusions– so there are many treatment-resistant depression patients that might benefit from the drug but cannot access it.
Rido – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person
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Finally, while ketamine infusions have been shown to offer symptom relief in as little as two hours post-treatment, the effects do wear off within the following weeks.
This pushes patients back to seeking out the costly therapy– and perhaps even longer waitlists.
So, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh recently conducted a double-blind, randomized clinical trial in hopes of broadening ketamine’s potential by pairing the drug treatment with a computer-based digital therapy.
“Our goal is to leverage digital technologies and develop a strategy that will efficiently extend the time between appointments, save patients money and get more patients effective depression care,” explained Rebecca Price, an associate professor at Pitt’s School of Medicine.
In turn, the team devised a strategy that would pair a ketamine injection with a computer-based training session.
The training used uplifting words, such as “sweet” and “worthy,” along with positive imagery. Then, the patient’s photo was displayed alongside images of other people smiling.
Finally, the researchers tested this strategy within a clinical trial of over one hundred and fifty adults. After each patient received a single ketamine infusion, the patients were then split into three groups.
One group completed eight twenty-minute training sessions over the following four days. The second group completed a non-therapeutic version of the training. Finally, a third group received a saline infusion before completing the therapeutic training.
And the researchers found that over the following month, the people who received ketamine and therapeutic computer-based training reported fewer symptoms of depression than the other two groups.
This suggests that pairing neurocognitive training with ketamine infusions will extend the drug’s antidepressant effects– which could potentially extend the time between appointments and limit out-of-pocket costs.
In fact, the researchers were so blown away by the results of this straightforward treatment pairing that Pitt’s Innovation Institute has since filed a provisional patent.
“This automated intervention is so simple that it could be repurposed to address a variety of mental health conditions and easily tweaked to match the needs of an individual patient,” Price added.
So moving forward, the team is now analyzing whether or not patients who complete the training on smartphones and other personal electronic devices experience the same effects as the patients who completed the training on an in-clinic computer.
To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, visit the link here.
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