Category: Anxiety

Articles about Anxiety from Lori Calabrese, M.D. | The Ketamine Blog

When you feel that sense of dread or uneasiness about something in the present or in the future, that’s anxiety. Everybody feels that way at some point. An interview for a job, meeting your fiancee’s family, a major exam…. But for some people, the unpleasant dread can be overly intense and ongoing. When it’s so intense that it interferes with your life, causing you to miss work, or miss social opportunities… then it may be a disorder. These articles about anxiety shed light on the difference between moments of anxiety, and a lifetime with a severe, debilitating disorder.
Anxiety can be as mild as a transient feeling of butterflies, or so intense and overpowering you think you’re having a heart attack so you call 911.

Types of anxiety disorders:

1. Social anxiety

is the overpowering and relentless fear of being watched and judged by others. It can cause you to feel afraid to meet new people, to believe everyone in the room is talking about you, and to feel intensely self conscious in the presence of others. This is a serious mental health condition that can prevent you from interviewing for jobs or excelling at the one you have, or from meeting new people and building relationships.

2. Postpartum anxiety

This is emerging as a serious disorder in woman, at least as prevalent as postpartum depression. It can express symptoms like panic, fear of harming the baby, poor bonding with baby, obsessive worrying, inability to eat, sleep, or relax. Also, it can include the obsessive fear the panic will never resolve.

3. General anxiety disorder

obsessive and continuous worry about one’s health, work, social contacts and interactions, as well as daily routine circumstances and experiences…that repeat almost every day for at least six months.

4. Panic Disorder

Characterized by repeated and overwhelming panic attacks with accelerated pounding heart rate, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, and feelings of impending doom. Often brought on by triggers, but not always. The attacks lead to a fear of the attacks, and a driving desire to avoid them, which can often lead to agoraphobia.

5. Test anxiety

Irrational dread of testing in spite of being well prepared. The anxiety can rise until the person’s displaying symptoms of panic like accelerated heart rate, headache, nausea and sweating. Can result in the mind going blank, and general functioning shuts down.

6. Phobia-related disorder

Agoraphobia – fear of enclosed public spaces, fear of open spaces
Arachnophobia – fear of spiders
Acrophobia – fear of heights
Dentophobia – fear of dentists
Claustrophobia – fear of enclosed, confined spaces
Aerophobia – fear of flying
Aquaphobia – fear of water
Zoophobia – fear of animals
Coulrophobia – fear of clowns – (not officially recognized but widely claimed)

7. Separation anxiety

Occurs in children and adults, and expresses as fear of being apart from people to whom they’re attached. They often worry that something terrible will happen to the person they’re connected to, and so avoid separation from that person as well as avoid being alone.

8. Selective mutism

A rare disorder in both children and adults where people don’t speak in specific situations, even though they have well developed language skills. It’s often associated with extreme shyness and fear of social embarrassment, and usually begins before the age of five.

9. Obsessive -Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Considered to be connected to anxiety disorders, but there is controversy as to whether it belongs here. At the very least, that person who suffers from OCD has feelings of anxiety and usually feels powerless to control the intrusive thoughts they have, or their reaction to them.
This is not an exhaustive list, but rather examples of anxiety disorders.

Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

Some people suffer from a cluster of anxiety disorders and mood disorders combined, while some struggle with only one. Since anxiety disorders are best treated for the specific diagnosis, the more complex a person’s condition is, the more complex it may be to treat.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

demonstrates promising outcomes for some types of anxiety. Cognitive behavioral therapy shows the most promising outcomes as a form of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy combined with anxiolytic medicines, serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) and serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) can be helpful, as well.

IV ketamine treatment has demonstrated favorable outcomes in some patients with some types of anxiety. Social anxiety can be debilitating and interfere with the desire to build life, family, and career. Ketamine treatment is one of the most effective treatments for social anxiety. There is exciting work being done with OCD patients and ketamine treatment also.
We invite you to continue reading the following articles about anxiety by Lori Calabrese, M.D.

How Stress Takes Down the Best People…and What To Do About It

Heather was 38, and had had a series of extreme stressors over a period of several years. She was a giver at heart, always looking for ways to help — always trying to make the lives of people she knew easier or more fun.

But then her husband left her. It was the same old, tired story — an affair with her closest and dearest friend. But still … she was left with two enormous losses, and a crippling sense of betrayal about both of them.

She tried to function for the sake her of two children, Katie and Noah. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time.

Another Devastating Crisis

Three years later, Noah was hit by a school bus and rushed to the hospital. He had a concussion and his pelvis and femur were broken in so many places they gave her minimal hope he’d walk again. Weeks in the hospital, then months of rehab. Asking neighbors and family members to pick her daughter up at school, get her to piano lessons, grab dinner.

She was exhausted. And Noah was beginning to walk with a walker and just starting back to school when she got a phone call from her mother.

Another Overwhelming Tragedy

Her dad had died when she was 25 and her mom lived alone. Mom just found out she had an aggressive form of breast cancer. She’d been told to expect a year minimum of treatment then re-evaluation. But when her mom got so tired she couldn’t drive back and forth to chemo, there was nothing to do but have her mom stay with her. She’d probably be there through radiation, too. Heather asked her mom’s neighbors to look in on her house.

So a household of three greatly stressed people became a household of four extremely stressed people. Heather just held her chin up and set out to get through this, too. The idea of losing her mom when she was so young was terrifying.

She cooked, cleaned, ran the kids around. Made dinner. Went to work. Drove her mom to chemo. Did everything.

Stress Takes Down the Best People

Finally, 6 months later, her mom had to be admitted to the hospital. Her next door neighbor offered to take care of Katie and Noah for a few days. Thank goodness. But then … Heather didn’t get out of bed or out of her pj’s for three days … and she felt less and less like getting out of bed after that. She went through the motions of getting her kids to school and back home again … and feeding them when they were hungry. But she was numb. She was barely functioning.

Finally, darkness wrapped around her like a cold box, and she felt hollow. Numb. Adrift.

Someone from the church came to see her. When they saw how she looked, they could see she’d been through too much for too long. They went to work to take over the care of her mom, and took her to the hospital. Heather was admitted with severe Major Depressive Disorder.

Heather’s a giving, kind, and generous person. But chronic and repeating stress can take down the best people, and Heather was no exception. It brought her to her knees.

How Stress Brings Someone Like Heather to Her Knees

We’ve talked and talked about what stress does to your brain, and how it contributes to depression.

But let’s talk about why that happens.

Thanks to recent studies sponsored by Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, we’ve learned some things lately.

And I’m excited to share them with you.

It all makes so much sense when you get a peek inside the brain to see what happens.

MIcroglia Unwittingly Launch a Destructive Attack

There are immune cells in the brain, called microglia, that are responsible for defending against infection, among other things. One of the other things they do is help build and change the construction of neural connections in the brain.

Huge. And hugely important.

In this study, the research team, led by Ronald S. Duman, periodically caused laboratory mice to undergo stress-inducing conditions over a period of weeks. Then they evaluated the effects of this chronic stress on their brains.

It’s not surprising that the mice displayed symptoms of depression and anxiety. The team demonstrated that the neurons in the prefrontal cortex — which control your abilities to make decisions and function socially — react to the stressors.

Specifically, these brain cells signal the microglia to begin “remodeling” pyramidal neuronal circuits … which basically WEAKENS them. The outcome is that the synaptic connections between the neurons in the prefrontal cortex begin to break down. And too many of them are lost.

Sounds like Heather. Broken down. Lost.

Maybe that sounds like you.

How to Stop the Damage?

Then the team carried it another step.

When they blocked the neurons from signaling the microglia, the chronic stress the mice were subjected to did not affect their synapses in their prefrontal cortex so they did not become depressed.

The research team concluded that finding a way to block the neurons from signaling the microglia could be a way to treat anxiety and depression.

(It seems to me this could be a fantastic way to prevent anxiety and depression in those subjected to long term chronic stress, such as first responders, those with chronic illnesses, and more.)

You can imagine that if you undergo extreme stress over an extended period of time, that more and more of these connections will be lost due to microglia activity. And depression and its accompanying anxiety become more and more severe.

So what can be done about this deconstruction… these massive losses of synapses?

Restoration through an Extraordinary Medicine

Enter IV ketamine treatment, which has been shown to rapidly rebuild and proliferate these synapse connections that have been broken down by depression and anxiety … which are caused by stress and which create more stress of their own.

Remember that tiny doses of ketamine, administered properly, turns on mRNA to switch on DNA which turbo charges the brain-derived-neurotrophic-factors (BDNF) so the synapses grow, branch out, and proliferate creating a dense forestation of neuron connections.

And when all these neurons in the prefrontal cortex are tied together with a dense network of synapses, you come alive. Joy returns. Creativity blooms. Initiative and motivation billow.

This is what we can do about those lost synaptic connections.

Innovative Psychiatry Offers Expertly Administered Ketamine Infusions

We know that stress takes down the best people. You probably know someone like Heather who tries to help everyone, but eventually she’s the one who breaks down and needs help.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we see extraordinary, positive outcomes in treatment-resistant depression and bipolar depression, as well as in PTSD, OCD, social anxiety and suicidal thinking. That means that very ill people can get really, truly better. As in happy, upbeat, full of energy, initiative, and hope for the future.

You can feel like yourself again. With the energy to embrace each day, the hope to look forward to the future. You can enjoy an afternoon breeze, a beautiful ocean view, or the fragrance of a summer rose.

When was the last time that happened?

If you suffer from depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, social anxiety or suicidal thoughts, and medications haven’t helped, call us. We can help you leave psychiatric disorders behind, and live a fulfilling life.

Live as the best you you can be.

To the emerging of your very best self,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.

April 9, 2018
International Conference on Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders 2018

Can you say PHENOMENAL???

Let’s hear it for Ketamine Treatment and Oxford!!

I just returned from a history-making global conference focused on research and clinical evidence for ketamine for psychiatric disorders. Experts from nearly every continent spoke of their own data and evidence from this emerging field of the the science behind ketamine and the extraordinary help ketamine treatment provides. The entire room was held spellbound for three days, from the first word spoken until the final applause Friday afternoon. It was an unforgettable event in the most beautiful and historic venue at Wadham College, Oxford, UK.

A 400-Year-Old Chandelier in a 400-Year-Old Room

In the 1650’s, a group of individuals including such celebrated thought leaders as Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, and Thomas Willis began an “Experimental Philosophy” club where the fundamental premise required that orthodox thought was rejected and the world was viewed through the “broadened lens of experimental scrutiny.”

Well, this club became the Royal Society when members of the family of King Charles II got involved. When that happened, the revolutionary became the norm.

It seems only fitting that this international conference on the revolutionary breakthroughs for treating psychiatric disorders should be held in this same building, and on these same grounds.

Rupert McShane chaired this ground-breaking event. Hats off to him for beginning what we hope will become an annual international conference.

Luminaries in the Ketamine Adventure

Gerard Sanacora, a frontline researcher for ketamine treatment in psychiatry, spoke first. He previously served as the lead researcher of the American Psychiatric Association Counsel of Research Taskforce for Novel Biomarkers and Treatments which published a consensus statement about ketamine for this purpose in mid-2017.

Dr. Sanacora kicked off the conference with an overview of the literature and key studies that have explored ketamine’s mechanism of action in treating psychiatric disorders. It was brilliant!

We’ve been keeping you informed about some of those in recent times … but there was so much more that was discussed.

Luminaries all around! We were graced with Peter Somogyi and David Lodge whose seminal work on NMDA and axoaxonic cells paved the way. Many of the top ketamine researchers and clinicians in the world presented their findings: Colleen Loo, Jennifer Southgate, Nuri Farber, Steve Levine, David Feifel, Declan McLoughlin, Haggai Sharon, Alison McInnes, Samuel Wilkinson, Michael Grunebaum, Elias Dakwar, Rupert McShane, Raquel Bennett, Karen Lascelles, Jeffrey Becker, Ian Anderson, Gordon Fernie, James Stone, Meng Lei, and Dan Iosifescu. Jose Miyar covered regulatory issues. Jonn Donello and Suresh Durgam discussed new breakthrough findings for the mechanism of action of Rapastine, and Jaz Singh presented new data about the safety and efficacy of esketamine.

And of course, the extraordinary international collaborative teams involved in all of this work … the freshness of perspective emerging across the field — from doe-eyed young researchers to seasoned principal investigators … the breadth and energy of molecular, cellular, neuroimaging, and clinical work represented in the posters.

Breathtaking doesn’t do it justice.

We talked about everything ketamine from mice to men … and from chandelier cells (just as gorgeous as the chandeliers King George IV gifted to Wadham College for the Holywell Music Room) to psychotherapy.

How fitting that we heard about paradigm shifts in the very room where Handel and Haydn first played! Raquel Bennet, Founder of KRIYA Institute, explored the importance of the dissociative experience as transformative, and the many ways ketamine has been used in clinical practice.

Biologically to induce neuronal plasticity (we talked about this before), as a sort of lubricant to enhance psychotherapy, and to deliberately induce dissociation … which can be transformative for the patient.

Jeffrey Becker offered us an elegant unifying hypothesis for ketamine in clinical practice, exploring the GABAergic interneurons and Jungian archetypes in treating people with depression.

The depth and breadth of this conference was amazing. The sheer richness of talents in the room, the knowledge and experience gathered into this one place from all over the world. Everyone talked about how much more we need to learn, and the questions that still need to be answered.

Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders – Global Conference! Stunning.

These were basic scientists, principle investigators, neurimaging experts, clinical researchers, psychiatrists, anesthesiologists, psychologists … it’s astonishing to realize the scope of interest and exploration there is in perfecting this most remarkable treatment to help you get better.

When you feel depressed, deeply and severely … or when your vigilance and terror from PTSD is tearing apart your family … or when bipolar disorder rips you apart … It can feel like you’re all alone and no one out there cares. You know you don’t know the solutions. So you feel like you’re relying on scientists to figure out the solutions … but … is anyone really trying to help you?

This is why I tell you about this conference. This sharing of data, preliminary findings, hypotheses, results… just to show you there are people all around the world who explore the solutions to your pain, and work on solutions for you … and others like you … as feverishly as they can. They care. And they’re dedicated to learning more and more. All to help you.

As for me, I presented data from my clinical practice. It demonstrates that ketamine can be used to stop suicidal thoughts. And it happens often in a real-world outpatient clinical practice. What’s more, it provides an alternative to hospitalization.

Someone recently mentioned to me that he predicts the excitement over ketamine will fade away.

Of course, he’d probably read negative media accounts and had probably missed the science … and all the studies. But I have to say, I wish he and others who share that “doom and gloom” outlook could have been present to hear all the extraordinary work going on with ketamine and related compounds.

It seems pretty clear to me: ketamine treatment is going to be with us a good while.

Ketamine Can Make Antidepressants Work Better for Hospitalized Patients

Declan McLoughlin spoke of his study in Dublin using ketamine to try to prolong remission after ECT. He also explained his work using ketamine as an additional treatment combined with antidepressants for hospitalized patients in Dublin.

These are just examples. But they don’t even scratch the surface of all the topics covered these three days last week.

There’s no question that ketamine treatment has a long way to go to reach “mainstream status.” Everyone in the upper echelons of research and practice seems to agree we need to know so much more. The more we learn the more questions arise that we need answers to. But we know so much more than we did even two years ago.

This is the breakthrough we’ve wished for … depressed and anxious people, suicidal people, people wracked with PTSD, or torn by bipolar disorder, trapped by OCD. This is what you’ve yearned for. So have I. Many say this is the greatest breakthrough in fifty years in psychiatry. But we can go further than that.

This is the best, life-changing breakthrough for people who suffer with psychiatric mood disorders EVER.

There is so much more to learn…so much! Ketamine is the new frontier in psychiatry and the treatment of psychiatric mood disorders and more.

Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders like Substance Use Disorders

One more story I have to tell you about. Elias Dakwar (we’ve talked about his work) discussed his research with ketamine in treating substance use disorders. You might remember our post on crack cocaine use in February.

We talked about how Dakwar and his team studied responses of crack cocaine users. Those who were currently using and had no intention of stopping. When they had been given ketamine infusions the day before being offered either crack or money, they had the motivation to turn and choose money, and their craving was so diminished that they also had the power to turn down crack.

That brings up something we’ve talked about here: that ketamine restores initiative and motivation.

All in all, this conference gathering of great scientific minds, young researchers, and brilliant clinicians was a huge step forward for the needs of depressed and anxious people. A huge step forward for the use of ketamine in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Research is ongoing to test ketamine’s use with psychotherapy, ECT, TMS, and traditional antidepressants. Plus, its effectiveness intravenously, intramuscularly, subcutaneously, orally, and intranasally.

Now we’ve all gone back to our home offices, and our work will continue. And this time next year I hope we’ll see that ketamine’s advantages have taken another big step forward.

Meanwhile, at Innovative Psychiatry, we’re still here providing IV ketamine treatment. And we see life-changing results with it for people with treatment-resistant depression, bipolar depression, social anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, and suicidal thoughts.

If you’re suffering from a mood or anxiety disorder, treatment hasn’t helped, I’m sure you’re far more concerned about your desire to feel better and function again, than about a conference. And that’s why we’re here and want to help. We try to offer you the best that the world has to offer. This time from the first International Conference for Ketamine and Related Compounds.

Call us or schedule an appointment here to be evaluated.

There is hope. You can feel truly better.

So don’t judge your next treatment by the ones you’ve had before. This time, chances are, you’ll see a difference. And you’ll remember how to live again.

To your life and the emerging of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, MD

March 26, 2018
Help Your Kids Prepare for the Future: Learn Psychiatric Symptoms with Teens
Do you know how many students will be registering for college this year? Have you thought about it..? Take a wild guess.

Close to 4 million…! Can you imagine the diversity in that number? That’s more than the population of Los Angeles!

Serious Challenges for an Adolescent or Young Adult

In addition to the size of this group, there are also stressors this LA-sized group of people is facing for the first time in their lives.

Their first time to leave home, their first time to enter the workforce, their first time to be accountable to strangers on their own, while taking much harder classes than they’ve taken before.

They’re moving to a new place full of strangers, among whom they’ll hope to find friends.

Plus unlimited access to alcohol and illicit substances. Easy access to sex. And the responsibility to recognize within themselves signs of health changes…including mental health.

It’s a tall order. And every college and university is packed with a whole crowd of them each and every semester.

Going to College with Anxiety or Depression

If your teen – who’s becoming an adult – has already been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, you’re a step ahead in one sense. You and your child have faced the illness, and hopefully, she has adjusted to her medications. It’s much easier for a teen to go through that process at home than in another city, away from the comfort and understanding of her family.

You still need to devise a plan to help her maintain stability and go for help when the stability changes.

So it’s vital to her success that you ask her psychiatrist and therapist if they offer telepsychiatry so that they can follow her when she’s at school. If not, ask them for referrals in the area or contact the counseling office for therapists and psychiatrists near campus or in the area.

Then make calls and explore. If you can establish a connection with the professionals your son or daughter could see in case of difficulty, it will make it much easier for her to go for help if symptoms rear their ugly head.

Keep some things in mind:

1. She’s likely to make some mistakes… Don’t fix them. Listen and encourage her to think through some solutions.

2. Be sure she knows where to go to fill prescriptions.

3. Check on her regularly. Without hammering her with “mental health” questions, find ways to get updates on red flag areas. Clinical psychologist Bobbi Wegner says to watch the “trilogy of health”, i.e., sleeping patterns, eating, and energy. If any of these are out of whack, dig deeper.

Then, if something’s not right, remind her of the psychiatrist and therapist you found, and encourage her to make an appointment. If she can’t seem to do that due to anxiety, phobias, or depressive symptoms, you may need to intervene and help her seek treatment.

“My Son’s Resilient and a High Achiever. He’ll Be Fine.”

Famous last words… so to speak. What if your child seems resilient and confident about studies, friends, his life while he’s in high school…?

Don’t let yourself fall into la la land, and tell yourself no news is good news. That’s just not true.

l. Putting your head in the sand about potential mental health symptoms when your kid goes to college, is as silly as sunbathing on top of a travel trailer while watching an approaching tornado fifty yards away. Feeling confident isn’t going to determine the future.

What’s the saying…? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Learn about anxiety and depression just as you have learned about meningitis, pneumonia, and the flu.

2. Be prepared to hear your son say he’s overwhelmed during semester finals. Listen, and offer to help. Sometimes that’s all they need to hear… but if he wants to keep talking, welcome it.

3. Make sure your kids know it’s completely acceptable to ask for help.

Here are some tips for conversations to help your teen communicate his feelings and learn psychiatric symptoms:
- I’m so sorry you’re feeling like this. Do you have any thoughts about why?
- It sounds to me like you don’t want to go to class. Why do you think that is?
- What do you think is going on…?
- How can I help…?
- I’ve noticed so and so…, how do you feel about it?
Questions like this tend to open conversation while helping him figure out for himself what’s going on.

Start these conversations when your kids are young…so that by adolescence they’ll be building some skill to recognize problems – as well as solutions – themselves. This gives them equipment to manage their emotions and fears when they’re on their own.

Will Your Child Suffer Mental Health Symptoms in the Future?

Let’s open up communication with kids about their mental health…to prepare them for college and the future. Let’s learn psychiatric symptoms with teens, and build a family awareness together. It’s empowering, for you and for them.

There is no way to predict the responses your child will have as he enters – and forges through – adulthood. If he seems resilient now, that’s a great start. The child that appears to be the most resilient may continue on as a successful Unsinkable Molly Brown. Or he may find the harder he works, the more overwhelming life seems to become for him.

Especially if he suffers physical injury or severe emotional setbacks. Your resilient 13-year-old can become a burdened 28-year-old…or a disabled 34-year-old..if at some point he needs help and doesn’t get the help he needs.

Clearly, students need to be having conversations with their parents earlier. Mood disorders or learning disabilities need to be identified when they’re as young as possible. Then treatment can be in place before college is considered.

Further, if kids have struggled through middle school and high school with social anxiety, that anxiety may spread to more areas of life through increased pressure and stress.

Social anxiety combined with depression may morph to agoraphobia (anxiety in situations where you perceive the environment to be unsafe with no easy way to get away) given the requisite stressors. And agoraphobia can seriously interrupt a student’s progress for the semester.

Many parents who don’t worry about their high-achieving child have been shocked and felt helpless when he breaks under the pressure. That’s not to say you should be worrying…but rather proactively preparing, just in case.

When To Educate Yourself and Your Kids about Mental Wellbeing

Now, think about this: What if parents started the conversation when their kids are 11 or 12, and kept an ongoing dialogue about how things affect their child? What if a child grew into adolescence informed, so she could recognize suffering in her friends or herself?

What if she had learned to see psychiatric symptoms through the empathetic view of her family, rather than just as a list she and friends snicker about in health class?

Just as we parents talk to our children about sexuality, what if we talked to them about mental health? What if we learned together about signs and symptoms, and with that learning, also learned compassion…?

What if we started now, no matter what their age?

So what do you say about mental health if you’ve never discussed it before with your 17-year-old?

Maybe something like…”I’ve been reading a lot, and realize there’s a lot I don’t know about anxiety and depression. But I’m learning these disorders can happen to anyone…do you know anyone who suffers from something like this? panic attacks? social anxiety? mood swings?

Or if you see symptoms in your teen, maybe lay safety groundwork…” If I promise to not freak out, would you tell me how you’re feeling about things these days?”

The dialogue will see you through, and will usher them, into college safely and with confidence. And in the long term — through clear and transparent communication. Through empathy and respect for themselves and others.

Teaching Your Child to Take Care of Her Mental Health

By fostering an atmosphere of understanding and openness in your home, you can proactively learn – with your children – what mental and emotional well-being looks like. And how to recognize warning signs of illness.

You teach your children about sex. You teach them about drugs. Teach them about mental health, as well.

When your child has grown into a broad comprehension of health, encompassing physical and mental well-being, he can naturally seek out mental health professionals when he sees anxiety or depression symptoms in himself.

Prepare your child to care for his health and wellbeing. Help him locate mental health professionals as well as the campus clinic when he starts to college.

Sometimes Giving Your Child “Room” Is Too Much Space

Fearing the mistakes of “helicopter parenting,” many parents don’t recognize in their adolescents when it’s time to seek help. They give their child room to work through his own problems. Unfortunately, a severely depressed adolescent often lacks the energy or stability to seek the treatment he needs or make decisions about his health.

Way too often, these withdrawn teens feel like failures. And what may look like immaturity to parents and teachers may actually be psychiatric symptoms.

Psychiatric symptoms are not the same thing as a lack of “maturity.” In fact, untreated psychiatric symptoms can be an obstacle to the proper development of maturity.

Psychiatric Symptoms in Teens

There are also those teens who managed to get through high school without treatment. Who didn’t realize life and school wasn’t this hard for everyone else. They just keep pushing through, white-knuckling it every day, every week.

When they finally graduate, they hope they’ll be better now. But then the stressors of living away from home, carrying a heavy load of classes, keeping up with all the reading and assignments…well, it gets to be too overwhelming. Not to mention test anxiety in college students is through the roof.

They were able to continue functioning until now. Maybe they’re in their first or second semester. Then one day they go to bed in the dorm, and just can’t get up in the morning. Or the morning after that. Or the morning after that…. And finally, the guilt and shame and inability to face the pressure any more lead to failing grades. Academic suspension. Shame and guilt.

Their parents are blind-sided. Had no idea their daughter hadn’t been going to class. And they wonder why…?

By learning about mental health together with your kids, you both are prepared if anyone in the family…or friends for that matter… begins to exhibit psychiatric symptoms. So, rather than jumping to the conclusion that your child is rebelling or doesn’t appreciate the opportunity you are paying for him to have…you both can talk about symptoms.

Symptoms to Watch For

Remember the trilogy? Sleep patterns, eating, and energy.

Your child just may be too depressed to get out of bed. He may not have the energy to face his life. In fact, he may be eating constantly…. Or forgetting to eat altogether.

Your kid would not be the first or the 1000th kid who displayed these symptoms in college. But educating yourself and your children about what can happen when stress is too high, or in the wake of a tragedy, helps you all to productively respond if it does happen.

Helping your children learn ways to relieve stress as they’re growing up can also help. But above all, be informed, and help your children to be informed too.

If you have a child or young adult who seems to display symptoms of psychiatric mood disorders, call us. We can help him feel better and function at his best again.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we see wonderful results from the use of IV ketamine treatment in 80% of those who have not been helped by any other treatment. Remarkable relief, initiative, hope, and erasure of suicidal thinking. There’s nothing else like it to relieve symptoms and restore you to full function again.

To learn more about IV ketamine treatment, read this and this to get started. Also, if you don’t have children headed for college, but know someone who does, consider sending them this article to help them prepare, too. Niece or nephew? They might benefit by preparing now, to better manage what comes later.

Your child has his whole life ahead, and there are extraordinary ways to treat psychiatric mood disorders that we’ve never had before. Contact us for an appointment.

To the development of your teen’s best self,

Lori Calabrese, MD
March 12, 2018
Mental Health Issues in College Students — Prepare Early

Does Your College Student Know Where to Find Mental Health Support?

Jonathan stood at the curb, watching his parents drive till they were out of sight. He felt lost. Vulnerable. Tired. He didn’t know much about mental health issues in college students … or even first graders, for that matter.

Jonathan had been depressed most of his life. His parents noticed the pain in his eyes from the time he was a preschooler, and tried to help in every way they could. He was their first child, and they didn’t recognize he needed professional help.

His sadness and social anxiety held him back in countless situations. He was very bright and did well in school, but socially he was isolated much of the time. He searched early, and visited colleges with his parents. But contributed very little to the decision.

They chose a small private college, where student/faculty ratio was intimate and friendly. And when it was time to go, they packed him up and drove the 4 hours to the campus. He followed as they carried his belongings to his dorm room. Afterwards, they all went to dinner, then back to the dorm. Hugs all around with words of encouragement. And they left.

Jonathan had no idea what he would do. As time moved on, he tried very hard to do well in his classes. But his energy for it eventually faded. And after a year he told his parents he wanted to leave school. He withdrew, packed up his belongings, and drove away.

Treating Mental Health Issues in College Students – A BIG Problem

A rising problem in the US education system is the minimal attention given to the mental health of students — especially college students.

Since 80% of incoming freshmen are 18, some 17 or younger, and others 19 or older, most of these students are still very much adolescent. Add to that the fact that 75% of psychiatric disorders are diagnosed before the age of 24, and you can see that the college years are predisposed to turmoil for many kids.

And if you don’t really believe your student is susceptible to mental health issues, think about this: 45% of parents say their child has been diagnosed or treated for a psychiatric disorder. Add to that: those who need help but haven’t sought it. Those who are afraid … of stigma, cost, and the rumors they’ve heard about psychotropic medications. Or children of parents who are misinformed.

Do the math, and you’ll see that your daughter or son has more than a 50/50 chance of needing psychiatric treatment in the years ahead.

Yikes.

How Common are Psychiatric Symptoms in Teens?

A survey was conducted with 712 parents of children in grades 9-12 and first year of college this past fall. The question asked if their child had been diagnosed or treated for anxiety disorders, stress, mood disorders, learning disabilities, self injury or suicide attempts, and more.

A full 20% reported anxiety disorders, 18% reported stress, 17% reported mood disorders, and 17% reported learning disabilities. These are parents whose children have been diagnosed or treated.

Of the same group of parents, 54% said their children had not been diagnosed or treated for a psychiatric illness.

Not because they hadn’t seen symptoms. But because they had not sought treatment. Some percentage of that 54% includes families with psychiatric suffering that they’re not recognizing or acknowledging.

Some People Don’t Believe in Psychiatric Illness…Still

There are still factions of society in this 21st century world who still don’t believe in the validity of psychiatric illness.

So, if they’re faced with it in a child, they consider these disordered behaviors as a lack of discipline, or misbehavior, or rebellion. So they apply more discipline to the situation. Consequences maybe. But nothing that treats the very real symptoms in the brain.

When teens from that kind of home environment enter the university environment, we see symptoms emerge that often require attention. The stress, the social pressure, and exhaustion from disordered sleep patterns sometimes lead to a crisis … sometimes even a need for hospitalization.

And again, by the way, the years a student spends in college coincide with the years the largest number of people in the 15-24 age group are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Is there any wonder why…?

The Need for Diagnosis and Treatment in College is Steadily Rising

The Center for Collegiate Mental Health reported in 2017 that the demand for mental health services on college campuses has increased continuously over the last seven years. Hands down, the most often repeated request is for counseling for anxiety and depression.

Parents who were surveyed listed their top criteria in choosing a university with their child. Those criteria included things like affordability, distance from home, academic reputation … but mental health services weren’t included on that list.

While it may not be all that unreasonable that parents don’t automatically explore availability of mental health services in the colleges they consider, you probably should place these services high on your list. It’s just smart.

Get Your Student in Touch with Mental Health Services Near His Campus

If your son or daughter is already seeing a counselor or psychiatrist, continuing treatment or finding mental health professionals they can trust on campus or nearby could make the difference in their academic success or failure. Cradling the idea that he or she can just “wing it” is not a recipe for satisfactory outcomes.

On the other hand, if your child has shown no signs of psychiatric stress or disorder, just be aware, and stay informed. The student with the highest performance in high school can still develop depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder in college. That’s not to say your child will fail. Not by a long shot.

But in far too many cases, parents are caught by surprise when a child with excellent performance falls into severe depression … and just withdraws and shuts down.

High Performance Students May Suffer Burnout

Sarafina was voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school, along with Class President, Homecoming Queen, and president of the honor society. She was hard working and disciplined, and maintained a 4.0 GPA even with a part-time job. When she started college, she got a work-study job on campus from the very beginning, and secured loans for her tuition.

She worked tirelessly toward her goal of acceptance into medical school.

But during her third year, something began to go wrong. Stressors that included unstable family members, a volatile political environment on campus, and the pressures of school and work finally capsized her ability to function. She had to withdraw from classes to seek psychiatric treatment for bipolar disorder, complicated by way too much drinking.

She just couldn’t do it any longer.

This is not an uncommon scenario with high achieving students. In some cases, the years of strain to get ahead, the sacrifices… and the pressure, culminate in an overwhelmingly bad place.

There Is Effective Treatment Available Now

If your child struggles with psychiatric mood disorders like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, social anxiety, PTSD or OCD, there is treatment that can help – therapy, and medications like SRIs.

And…even if they don’t, there is IV ketamine treatment.

Ketamine Treatment..?

Ketamine treatment for psychiatric mood disorders uses a tiny dose compared to the small amount used for anesthesia. We give these doses 3 times a week for a 2-3 weeks, depending on your individual needs.

Ketamine turns on mRNA to switch on DNA that turbo boosts the Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). BDNF is like a rich compost…that infuses dendrites and stokes neuronal (brain cell) connections, called synapses.

These dendrites branch out in fast motion to create dense dendritic spines, causing the signaling system in your brain to bloom like tomatoes at the county fair. When that happens, the signals start flying around in your brain connecting your thoughts, emotions, and well-being and bringing healthy, alert stimulation and balance.

At the same time, ketamine can erase suicidal thinking. Why is that important? Because there is no medication besides ketamine that has been shown to stop suicidal thinking in 4 hours or less. This is life-saving for someone in crisis, intent on suicide.

Your son? Your daughter? …You?

The second highest cause of death in college-age students? Suicide.

This is serious, and can mean life or death for the child you love. The best protection for your child is prevention. And after that, treatment. Ketamine treatment can prevent suicide now.

Innovative Psychiatry Treats Your High School or College Student

And, if you do have a teen who exhibits signs or symptoms of anxiety, depression, social anxiety, panic disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, or thoughts of suicide, call us. The earlier they receive effective treatment, the higher their prospects of recovery.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we see 80% of treatment-resistant psychiatric mood disorder cases achieve remission with IV ketamine treatment. Eighty Percent!

There’s never been such an amazing medication for depression and anxiety before.

Let us help you and your family restore, rejuvenate, and rebuild on solid, healthy ground.

To the restoration of your best, happy self,

Lori Calabrese, MD

February 24, 2018
4 Subtypes of Depression Target More Effective Treatment for You

Depression’s the Worst!

It drains your energy, robs you of enjoyment of ANYTHING, isolates you and makes you feel like no one in the entire world cares. Makes you feel like you’re a burden on the people you know. Makes you feel achey and lethargic.

Shuts down your brain so you can’t think. You can’t do your job. Can’t take care of responsibilities. Can’t function. You just can’t do. Or care.

What you do feel is worthless, hopeless, burdensome, guilty. It can even make you want to stop existing. To disappear. To die.

If all this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Not by a long shot.

Disability Plagues Depressed People

Did you know depression is the #1 cause of disability in this country? Ahead of arthritis, stroke, substance abuse, and COPD. Does that surprise you?

It should.

Because treatment hasn’t been as effective as we wish. But more about that later.

This is why so much you hear from psychiatrists, drug companies … and why social media refers to the epidemic of depression.

Well, in the interest of learning more about depression to find more effective treatment, a team of researchers set out on a quest.

Their idea was to find out how to “define” depression. To tease it into types based on the connections between various brain cell (neuron) clusters and how they behaved. Up till now, psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscientists have used the DSM V criteria to diagnose various subtypes of depression.

While this has been a great help, it doesn’t address brain changes and characteristics for various psychiatric disorders. But, neuroscientists need specific physiologic details that can be measured by machines rather than by subjective symptom reports and observation.

Brain Circuit Study about Depression

The study, funded by Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health, used brain scans to study connections in the brain in a variety of both depressed and healthy subjects.

The study, led by Connor Liston, MD, PhD, included neuroscience research teams from five prominent universities.

To rethink the general approach to diagnosis and treatment, they set out to identify new subtypes of depression. These were based on dysfunction in mood-related brain circuits. If they could understand more about the neuronal connections in the brain during various types of depression, maybe they could learn more about what type of treatment would be successful in each type.

This could potentially eliminate the “trial and error” approach that has plagued psychiatric treatment the last fifty years. Patients wouldn’t have to take a medication for 8-12 weeks to find out if it helps.

They made use of brain scans of these subjects periodically, and studied the differences in their scans. They also interviewed them each to correlate the symptoms of a given patient with that patient’s brain scan.

What they discovered in simple terms, is that these brain scan images fell into four different categories. With four different clusters of symptoms… and of those four there were two primary differences.

Anhedonia vs. Anxiety

Two of the four were dominated by severe anxiety, and the other two were dominated by anhedonia, or loss of interest or pleasure in things they previously enjoyed.

Those in the severe anxiety segment also tended to lose weight, and reported difficulty sleeping. While those two in the anhedonia segment tended to gain weight and crave carbohydrates, as well as slept long hours, such as 19 hours at a time.

You can see that though all four groups were diagnosed with depression, that the two groups of subtypes had almost opposite symptoms.

Two subtypes

To be certain they’d derived these four groupings correctly, they did the same scans and interviews with another set of people in a different city with different scanners, and different interviewers.

The results verified their findings. 4 groups. 2 main categories: one dominated by anxiety and the other by anhedonia.

If any of this is sounding familiar to you, there’s good reason.

4 Subtypes of Depression

Even the DSM V defines depression as a patient reporting 5 out of 9 symptoms that include extreme opposites. Such as weight gain or weight loss. Insomnia or hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness or sleeping). Psychomotor agitation or psychomotor retardation (restlessness or slowed movement).

You may have a little anhedonia, but are plagued by severe anxiety in many situations. You may feel restless and agitated. Along with that, you likely find it impossible to get much sleep at night, if any. And you worry and worry. In addition, you may notice you’re dropping weight.

On the other hand, if that doesn’t describe your symptoms, you may have minimal anxiety but have no feelings of pleasure, or enjoyment. And you may just want to go to bed and stay there. In fact, once you do, it may feel impossible to get out of bed again the next day. Plus, your waist is ballooning causing you to wear larger clothes.

We call it all depression. But the symptoms aren’t the same.

Liston and his team identified areas of the brain affected that led to this disparity in symptoms and named them Subtype 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Depression Subtypes Treated with TMS

The last significant step in the study required identifying which subtypes were improved by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and which weren’t. Learn more about TMS here.

In their tests, they placed the magnetic coil over the dorsomedial portion of the brain, as opposed to the often-used left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

They discovered the most receptive subtypes of depression to TMS treatment were subtype 1 and subtype 3. Most dramatically, subtype 1.

They also learned that use of the clinical subtypes and connectivity symptoms as criteria for TMS treatment was 96% effective. But choosing TMS treatment based on symptoms alone was only 63% effective. And connectivity alone is only78% effective.

The use of clinical symptoms combined with subtype diagnosis yields a dramatic improvement in predicting the best treatment for each subtype of depression.

The Future in Diagnosing Depression by Subtype

So … clearly, the first diagnosis is the one that determines you’re depressed and need treatment. But this approach to diagnosis will advance from the laboratory to the psychiatrist’s office. This ability to determine what type of depression you have will empower psychiatrists to get you better, more effective treatment, faster.

There is lots more research needed, such as trying the same study with antidepressants, anxiolytics, and IV ketamine using this same model.

And of course, software will be developed to help us use these tools.

The good news is that treatment for psychiatric mood disorders is advancing fast on many levels. The hopelessness that pervaded no less than a third of all depressed patients, when no medication seemed to help, is dissipating.

At Innovative Psychiatry, in South Windsor, CT, we offer TMS. TMS has demonstrated improvement for most who have anxiety related disorders. 75% of patients in our office who are treated with TMS experience dramatic relief and improvement.

We also provide IV ketamine treatment, and consistently see 80% of of our patients dramatically respond to treatment — even when everything else has failed them. A small percentage return for a follow-u or booster infusion periodically — if they need it or if a huge stressor occurs in their lives and sets off the first subtle signs of depression again.

And of the 20% that don’t immediately respond to ketamine in our practice, another 7% reach remission a few months later.

What’s more, IV ketamine treatment can erase suicidal thoughts in minutes or an afternoon. Ketamine can be life-saving.

If you have endured depression symptoms for a long time, and other treatments haven’t helped, call us. We’ve been working to find new ways to relieve treatment-resistant mood disorders for many years. We want to help you get your life back. Or …maybe build it for the first time. Schedule an appointment here, or just call. Your life can be so much better, in fact, you can be the best you ever.

To the emergence of your best self ever,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.

February 3, 2018
2018: Neuroscience Breakthroughs like IV Ketamine Treatment Mean Breakthroughs for YOU

Neuroscience breakthroughs like…IV ketamine treatment..?

Exactly.

2018 lies before us, like a valley that spreads to the horizon. And while it’s impossible to access the future, you can move forward knowing that each “today” you live has promise that was unheard of until recently.

Especially if you suffer from untreated or treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or anxiety — social anxiety, OCD or phobias.

Neuroscience researchers have been discovering more and more about treating psychiatric mood disorders that has transformed our approach to treatment — and the outcomes, as well.

The 21st century breakthrough of IV ketamine treatment for depression is transforming psychiatric medicine. Studying the effects of this treatment has revealed that depression and other mood disorders wear away at the signaling structures in the brain, leaving synapses, dendrites and dendritic spines broken, weakened, and sparse.

Neuroscience breakthroughs like IV ketamine treatment can bring breakthroughs to you … to your life.

The clearing away of those broken down structures, and the rebuilding of new ones in a denser, more prolific, forestation turns out to be key to treating depression. The old theory that depression was caused by levels of serotonin or dopamine that were too low … well they’re ancient history now.

Neuroscience Breakthroughs like IV Ketamine Treatment means Breakthroughs for You

Actually, so far we know of four ways ketamine clears away depression and erases suicidal thinking so quickly. And we’re watching with anticipation to see if research this year will reveal even more.

So another intervention ketamine performs is related to the G proteins that are piled on lipid rafts in the cell membranes of the neuron cells in the brain. Depressed people have these G proteins piled up on lipid rafts, where they can’t do their job to enhance signaling from synapse to synapse.

For those who are helped by traditional antidepressants, it takes several hours for those G proteins to slide off the rafts and become productive.

This is one reason it takes so long for traditional antidepressants to work for those they help. But when ketamine is given, they slide off the rafts within minutes. Remarkable.

Yet another healing action of ketamine is its effect on DNA. Turns out it also switches on mRNA which in turn flips the DNA switch to “ON” and that fire hoses BDNF across the synapse network.

BDNF is a growth factor like the richest of composts, and it empowers the dendrites and dendritic spines to burst into blooming branches like a giant oak tree. When the BDNF is fueled by ketamine, it turbo boosts that prolific branching of synapse structures, and your brain lights up like New York City. Unprecedented.

A well-lit brain is a happy brain.

Quoting from our earlier post entitled, “Breaking News: Another Way IV Ketamine Smashes Depression,”

As new synaptic connections are built, and greater communication between brain cells develops, the brain gains the ability to see things in a different perspective, and your outlook becomes brighter and healthier.

IV ketamine can jump start that process. Wait. No. It can turbo-charge it.

Extraordinary.

And the fourth action IV ketamine treatment performs is increasing glutamate levels to equip synapses to send more and faster signals across the brain, which traditional antidepressants don’t touch. Brilliant.

APA Task Force Issued a Consensus Statement in May 2017

What a year it’s been!

Four actions of ketamine we know about so far. The outcome is so extraordinary, so successful in such a large number of treatment-resistant cases, the American Psychiatry Association assigned a task force to issue a statement about the use of ketamine, this anesthesia medicine, off-label for treating depression.

Their statement was one of the most momentous and widely read articles of the year. In fact, it’s listed as #3 on JAMA Psychiatry’s “Most Talked About Articles of 2017.” Suffice it to say that those who were on the task force are true experts in our field. They’d seen ketamine’s power to lift depression right out of the water.

So they offered guidelines and cautions, and expressed their elation when interviewed that such a thing has happened in their lifetime.

They also specify that ketamine should be administered under a psychiatrist’s supervision.

TheHealthSite.com featured a list of the 6 best medical achievements of 2017 that everyone should know about…. Ketamine for depression stood strong on that list.

Of course, we know ketamine’s discovery didn’t happen this year. Many years of studies and clinical trials laid the groundwork for ketamine’s popularity now.

Thousands of patients have experienced the relief, the return of joy, initiative, creativity, and energy without side effects that ketamine provides.

Never before has there been such a medicine that treats so many disorders in such a huge percentage of the population as ketamine.

Ketamine has delivered HOPE.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we see 80% of patients who’ve suffered for years with treatment-resistant depression, crippling panic attacks, suicidal thoughts that won’t stop, severe bipolar disorder, PTSD, social anxiety, and OCD experience relief, restoration, and relaxation after treatment.

Another neuroscience breakthrough that means breakthroughs for you is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS. It uses a coil to create a focused magnetic field over the front left side of your head. Specifically the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex region.

Then it sends tiny repetitive pulses deep into the brain to the emotion-regulation region. This stimulates the nerve cells and wakes them up. When they wake up, they begin to function again and give you better emotional regulation and function.

With TMS treatment, you sit quietly for anywhere from 16 to 37 minutes, five days a week for 6-8 weeks. About halfway through the series of treatments, depression begins to lift, and you begin to feel better and better. Again, faster than traditional antidepressants, and without any of the weight gain, sexual dysfunction, fatigue, or GI side effects they can cause.

The sophisticated technology of TMS continues to develop. Even 5 years ago TMS seemed experimental and wasn’t widely available. But, like ketamine,TMS built a strong reputation for effectiveness.

In general terms, clinicians and hospitals report 60-75% success with TMS around the US. We see 75% of our patients consistently respond — and often remit — at Innovative Psychiatry.

Again, HOPE.

Curcumin has gained an ever stronger reputation for its use as an adjunct in treating depression. Plus the connection between the brain, mood, and the strengthening of the microbiome is growing and gives us more and more opportunities to work with your diet and lifestyle to improve your mood.

No known treatment lifts depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or OCD in 100% of cases at this point. But these innovative treatment options prove successful for 75 – 80% of people who suffer in spite of traditional treatments. Obviously, hope soars for you if suffer with depression.

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, social anxiety, OCD, you can feel better. The age of despair for sufferers is quickly dissipating. This has never been the case before. You really can feel better….lots better….as in really good.

If you’d like to start 2018 on a brighter, fuller, more functional, and happy path, call us. We live one day at a time, because “now” is all we really have. But live well. Live as the best you you can be.

To your very best self in 2018,

Lori Calabrese, MD

January 1, 2018
Ketamine Treats Social Anxiety Disorder…Seriously…?

Yes. Let’s be really clear.

Because nothing seems really clear if you’re someone who just doesn’t want to go …

Go?

Yes, who doesn’t want to … or can’t just easily … go. To work. To class. A meeting. That job interview. Even out for coffee. Or Shopping.

There are a thousand reasons you might not be able to go. You might be too tired, too busy, not interested … or too stressed, or depressed.

You may be too introverted or shy or … just too worried about what others will think of you, about how you seem to them, about whether or not you’ll do or say something embarrassing, or worse, yet, humiliating.

Humiliating is the worst

It’s a dread and a fear that you can’t shake if you have social anxiety disorder. Reassurance doesn’t help. Self-talk falls flat.

And it’s different than being introverted or shy. Social phobias and anxiety are often mislabeled “introversion”… but they’re not the same. We’re pretty complex — sensitive to the number of people around us, whether we know them, how they perceive us.

If you’re an introvert, you draw your energy from quiet time with your own company.

If you don’t know the people around you and feel uncomfortable, you may be shy — but once you get acquainted, you may be someone who comes out of your shell and chats them right up.

But if you have social anxiety, it means a sense of vague, but intense, fear rises inside you in social settings where you feel you will be observed, or noticed, or scrutinized. It could be by people you know or … by people you don’t know. You may believe that everyone is talking about you, criticizing you, even ridiculing you.

It can be so difficult that you find it hard to speak at all. Your palms may grow sweaty, your voice may crack …you may blush deeply over and over…where they can see it.

You wish you could control it, because the reaction you experience and the fear that you’ll make a fool out of yourself … and that others will notice and not want to interact with you is far worse than just getting acquainted with someone
. It’s crippling. You’re frozen. Wishing for an escape.

You feel like such a jerk.

How to Escape from Social Anxiety??

If you talk to a friend or counselor about it, they may ask, “so… what is it exactly that you’re afraid of?”

Well…how do you answer that..? Is the anxiety you feel something that just happens that you can’t prevent?

I’ve met lots of people who don’t even realize they have social anxiety. They never had a name for it. They believe it’s just the way they are, and they try to live with all the “can’ts.”

But I know others who dread entering an elevator with someone of the opposite sex, or who die a thousand deaths before walking into a classroom of students they haven’t met before, or who will cancel plans rather than experience the misery they feel when attending a gathering.

Social anxiety just makes life so difficult.

It holds you back in so many ways — from your own family, from making friends, from raising your hand in school to being able to sign up for classes, or talk to a professor. From entering an elevator with people in it.

Fast forward and you see it holding you back from using your native intelligence –to express your ideas, talk to a coworker, or to your boss … or the mortgage loan people or your server at a restaurant. If you can get to the restaurant.

It can ruin your life.

And put you at risk for developing other things that can ruin your life … like depression, alcoholism, and cardiovascular disease. Geez!

Most people who labor under the pain of social anxiety would get rid of it in a New York minute…if they could.

Treatment for social anxiety has been along the same lines as treatment for any anxiety-producing condition. Antidepressants and anxiolytics – medications that reduce anxiety — along with therapy have been the treatments used for the last 50 years or so. But, unfortunately, these have been only partially helpful.

Why isn’t treatment more helpful…?

About 1/3 to 1/2 of all people with social anxiety disorder don’t respond to the treatments that are out there for it –SSRI’s, venlafaxine and cognitive behavioral therapy. Even when you wait for 8 to 12 weeks to get the full benefits. All evidence-based treatments, for sure, but with inadequate relief for most.

That’s why it’s so exciting to see innovative treatment available for social anxiety disorder with impressive results from the absolute gold standard of clinical trials: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial — recently published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. IV ketamine treatment has novel actions in the brain that reduce anxiety and fear fast.

Ketamine Treats Social Anxiety Disorder

Ketamine switches on mRNA to switch on DNA to turbo boost BDNF, as you can read here. And it works rapidly to slide the G proteins off their lipid rafts in the cell membranes, as described here. Those G proteins have to be off the lipid rafts to do their job improving signaling between the synapses and neurons.

And…ketamine also blocks NMDA receptors AND improves glutamate levels, which you can learn more about here.

So far, we know about these four actions of ketamine in the brain. And ketamine is kicking bootie and taking names across the anxiety spectrum: PTSD, OCD, phobias, and now social anxiety disorder,

Jerome Taylor and his colleagues set up an elegant proof of concept study with just enough patients to give it power. Eighteen adults with social anxiety disorder, as described in the DSM-5, were given either a ketamine infusion or placebo infusion…and their responses were measured 3 hours after the infusion, and multiple times over the next 14 days. A great sample of real-world, complex people, some on and some off meds — just like in real life.

Then, 28 days after their first infusion, they came back in and got the other infusion; if they had a ketamine infusion first, they got a saline placebo the second time, and vice versa. Turns out that 17/18 patients knew when they got ketamine instead of saline, so the blinding wasn’t perfect. But there are always limitations to studies, and opportunities for refining the questions we ask and the methods we use the next time around.

Still.

Ketamine treats social anxiety. Ketamine was safe, generally well-tolerated, and worked. People responded to ketamine, and they had significantly greater reduction in anxiety that lasted up to 28 days, compared to when they were treated with placebo. Fear, avoidance, social anxiety, and social avoidance all fell significantly.

Of course, study results are often reported in the most conservative terms. We always need and want to know more. But this trial provided fine evidence that ketamine is effective in reducing social anxiety. Hopefully, this kind of anxiety reduction can lead to more social activities and opportunities for people who so suffer so terribly. Hopefully, this study will open the doors to more inquiry.

Isn’t that outstanding??

We always love to see clinical trials and studies that put ketamine through its paces. We love to hear of others who find ketamine to be effective in treating mood disorders.

Because here at Innovative Psychiatry, we see it every day. In fact, within our practice we see a strong 80% positive response to ketamine even in people who’ve failed everything.

We like to say that they didn’t fail — everything failed them. If you feel like what you’re doing isn’t working, you’re not alone. You may have one thing — depression, maybe, or bipolar disorder — or you may have a lot of things — PTSD, anxiety, and OCD.

But we have one of the 6 Best Medical Achievements of 2017 to offer you: IV Ketamine Treatment. We’ve used it for years … before anyone knew it was going to become one of the 6 Best.

…We’ve always been on the cutting edge.

We’re not a pop-up clinic. We’re not a johnny-come-lately.

We’ve developed our approach over the past 20 years to help those who suffer the most…and are desperate to find relief. We stay up at night to find solutions that are novel and innovative, that will allow you to function again and find joy in your life with the advanced treatment options that we offer.

We’re the only psychiatry practice in Connecticut that’s daring enough and forward-thinking enough to bring you a menu of advanced treatments in a beautiful outpatient office with its own library of research articles that supports everything we do: IV ketamine treatment, TMS, reducing inflammatory factors, improving nutrition and enhancing the gut microbiome.

We have advanced treatment options for you

If you’ve been suffering with a treatment-resistant mood disorder like depression, social anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and OCD, please call us. Let’s set up an appointment to figure out if IV ketamine or another innovative approach is right for you.

We don’t take over your medication management or therapy — we offer advanced solutions to enhance what you’re already doing — with the doctors you’re already working with. So you can finally leave social anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and OCD behind.

We want you to feel better… and we believe we can help.

We’re closed for the holiday but we’ll be back to schedule appointments right after the New Year. Put us on your calendar.

To the new emergence of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.

December 19, 2017
Anxiety Treatment That Doesn’t Make You Sleepy
What Is Anxiety, and How Do You Treat It?

People talk about depression, talk about PTSD, and about bipolar disorder. But how do you talk about anxiety? How do you know if you have anxiety, and how do you find anxiety treatment that won’t make you sleepy so you can do things without being tired…or without being overwhelmed?

What is it, really?

Anxiety Shatters Innocent Trust

Seven-year-old Chrissy climbed the stairs to take her bath…. It was dark upstairs. She wondered what could be lurking in the shadows. Surely there was nothing to be afraid of. She tried to convince herself that this is home, and her parents kept the doors locked, so no one could have crept in to wait for her upstairs in the dark.

There was nothing to be afraid of!

But her reasoning didn’t seem very convincing. As she reached the top stair step, and turned past the landing, groping in the darkness to find the bathroom doorway so she could flip on the light, her eyes tried to adjust.

Out of nowhere, two hands grabbed her in a sudden burst and she screamed in terror. Her 12-year-old brother burst into laughter and fell to the floor rolling around in glee.

“That’s not funny, Ben!!”

Anxiety Builds Obstacles to Moving Forward

…Eleven years later, Chrissy hugged her mom and dad goodbye, after they’d unloaded the car of all her boxes. They were about to drive back home and leave her to unpack and set up her dorm room. She would register tomorrow for classes. This was her first time living away from home.

She climbed the stairs of the dorm, walked down the long lonely hall, and stood before the door to her room.

Chrissy froze.

Her throat went dry, her stomach cramped, her palms sweaty.

She couldn’t open the door.

The key was in her hand but she couldn’t bring herself to push the key into the lock. A nightmare of some kind awaited her … she just knew it. What if her roommate didn’t like her? What if she wasn’t welcome…? Or worse, what if there were people inside who made fun of her?? This would have to be her home now, and what if she couldn’t relax here?

Why did she come? She wasn’t ready for this. She was too insecure, too shy. This was never going to work.

What had she been thinking????

Chrissy continued to stand in the hall. Looking at that closed door. Off behind her, she could hear voices. Chatter. Laughing….

She knew they were laughing at her. NO ONE goes to college without the maturity to walk into a dorm room.

She was going to be the laughingstock of the entire campus.

Minutes passed.

Finally, in one big moment of resolve, she wiped her wet palms on her jeans, shoved the key into the lock, opened the door, and walked in.

Anxiety Can Erode the Foundations of a Solid and Resilient Life

Nine years have passed since that day in the dorm hallway. Chrissy thinks sometimes she’ll never be able to manage her own life. She’s been to college, completed her degree, although there were some shaky times.

She’s held a couple jobs, but something always seems to go wrong. She keeps thinking she needs to build a career … but hardly knows where to begin.

Her self-confidence isn’t great, and she tries to hide it behind flashy clothes and makeup. She tries to appear to “have it all together,” but deep inside she wishes she could hide from the world.

Her live-in boyfriend works hard and works out, but with abuse in his childhood and PTSD from combat in Afghanistan, there isn’t much peace at home. His hyper-vigilance and flashbacks make the nights like a terror movie. She never knows when he’ll fly into a rage … or come at her. It’s a living nightmare, but she doesn’t want anyone to know what goes on…so she keeps it all to herself.

Over time, it seems to get harder and harder to just leave the house. One day last week she was at work and panic rose up inside her. She was shaking, trembling, and just couldn’t see much besides bright lights. She grabbed her purse and walked out. Got in her car and drove home. She hasn’t left the house since.

Not that she hasn’t tried. This morning she even put her things in a bag to go see a friend. Got into her car. And sat there. Why was this so hard? She reached into her purse to get the key. But couldn’t get it into the ignition. Just …couldn’t.

So she sat there. And cried…and cried….

Severe Anxiety Can Prevent You From Finding Your Place in This World …and Flourishing

Anxiety comes in lots of forms. It can be a nagging dread about entering a public place, or about joining a group of people. Sometimes the dread is worse than other times.

Sometimes it’s a sickening feeling that interferes with your good intentions.

Other times it’s a crippling terror that plants your feet – as if they’re concrete – bolted to the sidewalk.

Sometimes anxiety turns on faucets of sweat that run down your face and sides while you ride an elevator. Or makes your mind go blank when you stand up to give a presentation you’ve worked on for weeks.

A date with a someone new can lead to abdominal cramps, headache, and diarrhea.

But anxiety symptoms can get much, much worse. A rapid heartbeat and sweaty hands, face, and torso, along with severe chest
pain and shortness of breath can mimic a heart attack. Many people wind up in the emergency room — and they’re shocked when they’re told they’re having a panic attack, not a heart attack.

How Can You Get Ahead of Anxiety…???

The traditional treatment for anxiety has been antidepressants, anxiolytics, and therapy.

But. Unfortunately, only about one third of people who suffer with depression, anxiety, or both, get better with antidepressants or therapy, or both. Another third are believed to be helped with a second medication or combination of medications.

So about a third of all people with anxiety continue to suffer, lose their jobs, and sabotage their relationships with symptoms they can’t control.

Is There An Anxiety Treatment that Doesn’t Make You Sleepy?

Because IV ketamine works on different parts of the brain than traditional antidepressants, ketamine treatment can now make the difference for 80% of those people who’ve been left untreated. And un-helped.

And it yields extraordinary results in people who suffer from mood disorders by:
- clearing away and rebuilding the synapse connections, dendrites and dendritic spines,
- turning on mRNA to turn on DNA and turbo boost brain-derived-neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and
- speeding up the movement of G proteins off the lipid rafts in the cell membranes
All in all, ketamine helps rebuild brain structures that support communication through the prefrontal cortex and deep into the brain.

Ketamine Brings Your Brain to Life

Ketamine doesn’t make you sleepy. In fact, ketamine wakes up your brain. As the synapses are restored, signals travel faster and
faster deep into the brain, bringing a sense of well-being along with initiative, creativity, and order.

Your brain will function at a much more effective and efficient level. You’ll feel like your best self. Your sleep will improve when you’re sleeping, and your alertness will improve when you’re awake. It’s pretty extraordinary.

This is anxiety treatment that doesn’t leave you sleepy. There’s no fatigue, no weight gain, no sexual dysfunction, no constipation or diarrhea, and none of the other side effects you can see with other medications used to treat anxiety.

Ketamine is an anesthesia medicine that’s been used in emergency and surgical settings for 50 years, and has been found to be safe and reliable. It’s only been in the last several years that it has emerged as a remarkable treatment for depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders.

Ketamine’s rapid and robust antidepressant action is restoring the lives of those who’ve suffered with treatment-resistant psychiatric mood disorders.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we’re seeing a consistent response rate of 80% to IV ketamine treatment. So, while ketamine isn’t for everyone, chances are pretty good that it can really help you.

If you suffer from anxiety disorders that haven’t responded to other traditional treatments, call us for an appointment.

We’re not able to take on new patients who need medication management. That arm of our practice is just too full. However, we are accepting patients who want to see if they can benefit from ketamine for severe depression, crippling anxiety, and other serious mood disorders.

Let’s work together to help you get better.

To the restoration of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.
November 26, 2017
Can You Overcome Phobias? Apply IV Ketamine to Your Backstory
Let’s talk about anxiety…and phobias.

I guess we all have something that gives us the creeps, or we’d just like to avoid, like snakes or spiders, or pet poop.

But for some people, there’s a strong persistent reaction to that thing or situation to the point that it’s amplified far beyond the actual potential danger or threat of the “thing” in question.

Most of us feel uneasy about something from time to time. Getting up to speak to a large group for the first time, for instance. You might feel a little shaky or have a tremor in your voice, sweaty palms, and the worst…? Blushing while you try to collect yourself to begin your talk! This level of anxiety is uncomfortable, but not all bad. It can help you focus on your goal…motivate you to work hard to prepare.

The Crippling Burden of Phobias

However, for some, the blushing can billow out of control, sending tremors through your body, along with trembling hands, incapacitating sweating, and a paralyzing halt to functioning.. When your mind is blitzed with fear, and you can’t move, it’s safe to say you may be trapped in the rigors of an anxiety disorder. And that thing or situation that triggered all this may be a phobia.

And you know what? All of this started somewhere. Something probably happened, something traumatic, or heartbreaking, or terrifying. At some point there was probably a shocking experience that initiated this response of heightened anxiety, dread, and fear. Whatever that was..it’s your backstory. Your history. The reason you now suffer this way.

There are as many phobias as there are people who suffer from them. Phobias tighten their grip on anxious people regarding anything from fear of embarrassment in front of other people to fear of spiders, or of a tree, or the color yellow.

It’s easy to make light of these fears if you’re not a sufferer, but for those who are, the fears are crippling.

So, an anxiety disorder is not to be ignored. Anxiety demands your attention. In fact, it takes over and dominates your mind until you do something to find relief and reassurance.

The throes of anxiety can lead to phobias, to depression, to obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s no laughing matter, and in some ways, it’s the flour in the recipe for psychiatric mood disorders.

Phobias Leave the Sufferer Powerless

Once you’ve experienced a gripping, fear-fueled shut-down, you’ll probably find yourself avoiding another opportunity for a similar incident.

If you’ve been there, you know you can’t just “buck up” using mind over matter, and “get over it” as friends or co-workers might suggest. You can’t wish this reaction away. And time doesn’t automatically heal it. It’s embarrassing to be incapacitated by anything. People don’t usually understand.

Typically, phobias are divided into 3 categories.
- Simple phobias, like fear of a snake or dental work or air travel
- Social phobias are fears of embarrassment or humiliation in front of others, and play on feelings of insecurity
- Agoraphobia, the fear of being in a situation it would be hard to escape from… whether it’s fear of embarrassment or fear of harm
And it gets complicated. In any of these situations, if you suffered a panic attack, that panic attack can become the thing you’re afraid will happen again. So you avoid the situation for fear of suffering another attack.

Painfully Common

Anxiety can lead to one phobia or another, because when a persistent dread plagues you to the point that you arrange your life around a thing or event with the focus to avoid it, a phobia begins to form.

Around 3.3 million Americans at some point in their lifetime suffer from an anxiety disorder. Roughly 19.2 million Americans wrestle with phobias.

And anxiety often comes before depression.

We’ve known this for years. A very large study of thousands of female twins with major depression who all had various phobias — agoraphobia, social phobia, situational phobias, animal phobias — found that the most common phobia associated with major depression was agoraphobia.

Another conclusion was that a “modest proportion” of the genetic vulnerability (remember these are twins) to major depression is shared with a genetic vulnerability to phobias. What’s more, the non-genetic factors — like environmental experiences — that can predispose someone to depression, significantly makes a person more vulnerable to agoraphobia, specifically.

Risk of Agoraphobia Highest After Trauma

This means, if you’ve experienced something excessively painful, traumatic, and overwhelming in your life, your risk for agoraphobia is high. And the trouble with agoraphobia is that it isolates its victim…which makes the depression worse.

So, you can see the link between anxiety, depression, and phobias. And you can also see that treating the anxiety can even prevent the depression as well as phobias. But how?

There are some medications that will relieve anxiety, as well as depression, in some people. But, as we’ve discussed so often, those antidepressants and anxiolytics don’t end the anxiety, they just reduce it…for some people.

To the frustration of countless sufferers, the effectiveness of these medications for anxiety and/or depression is patchy… and it takes weeks or months for any given person to find out if she’s going to experience relief.

Those weeks and months can be a dangerous waiting period for those whose misery is leading to thoughts of suicide. And unfortunately, so many of these medications seem to stir up those very self-destructive thoughts.

Can You Overcome Phobias…?

Here’s good news. IV ketamine in low doses has shown consistent results in 80% of those who suffer with anxiety and depression where nothing else was effective. Nothing else brought relief.

So, that’s how IV ketamine works on your backstory… it restores your brain to its optimum function by targeting the structures and systems in your brain that lead to anxiety…and depression. IV ketamine treatments focus their effects on those changes in your brain that happened when you were hurt, traumatized, shocked… and began experiencing feelings you want to avoid. When the phobias began.

And within minutes or hours of the infusion, suicidal thinking can disappear, and those thoughts are forgotten. In their place is relief, like a ton of weight has been lifted off the sufferer’s shoulders. The previously sullen, nervous, fidgety feelings dissipate during the course of treatment, and the power to enjoy life blooms.

Three treatments a week for two weeks. That’s a typical treatment course. And your outlook becomes lighter throughout the two weeks of infusions. Lighter as the dread lifts. And lighter as the fear melts. Even lighter when the depression dissipates. Free of suicidal thoughts.

A recent study published in the Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience Journal demonstrated that long-term ketamine dosing can help erase fear memory … (which is what leads to phobias) … through DNA methylation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

Another thing… You may have read about the “problem” that ketamine isn’t lasting. But that’s the reason for the 6 session treatment protocol. Once you’ve had those 6 or so infusions, you’ll realize how much you really feel like the you that had been submerged all these years.

Hope.

Real hope. And relief from the albatross that’s weighed you down.

Fear. Dread. Nervousness.

No more. Can you imagine??

In some cases, we find it helpful to continue a monthly maintenance infusion. And that’s all it takes to give the freedom, energy, insights, and power to rebuild your life again. The power to confront your fears . . . with confidence.

Now, if you can’t remember when you were really yourself, without the sullenness, depression, listlessness, agoraphobia and more… then you’re in for a treat.

Many patients say they’d lost sight of who they really were, of what it was like to be at ease.

It’s almost miraculous.

If you’ve suffered from an anxiety disorder that doesn’t get better, or phobias that rob you of your freedom, call us or arrange an appointment. It’s our privilege to thoroughly evaluate you, your DNA, your history, to determine the best outcome for you.

We live to see you well. Let’s do this together.

To the rediscovery of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.
July 21, 2017
Breaking News: Another Way IV Ketamine SMASHES Depression

Another way IV Ketamine SMASHES depression

Sometimes news is so hot it sizzles.

It lures you away from whatever you’re into. It captivates you. And then — just face it — you think to yourself, with admiration, OMG. You say to yourself … whoever came up with that is brilliant. They nailed it.

Well, Mark Rasenik and his group from the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine nailed it. They presented absolutely breathtaking work in May at the SBP meeting — the Society of Biological Psychiatry. It’s the meeting where research is presented that is just so brilliantly conceived and executed that it’s mind-blowing.

Rasenik’s work is like that.

He and his group came in from left field with their brilliant discovery of a new way ketamine works which just might explain how and why it can begin to lift depressive symptoms in minutes.

Understand ketamine’s talents, then get creative

The goal was to learn what happens on a molecular level that causes IV ketamine’s fast depression relief. Because, of course, someone wants to design a drug just as effective as ketamine but without its side effects. This is the ever-loving quest for new drugs that wannabe like ketamine.

Now, we’ve talked before about how IV ketamine acts on synapses to stimulate them to grow, branch out, and flourish — multiplying the numbers of connections between neurons that send signals deep into the brain. We’ve also talked about neuroplasticity, and how it’s key to this process that causes the brain to change.

As new synaptic connections are built, and greater communication between brain cells develops, the brain gains the ability to see things in a different perspective, and your outlook becomes brighter and healthier. IV ketamine can jump start that process. Wait. No. It can turbo-charge it.

How to Get Those G’s Back to Work

So Rasenik and his team found that “g proteins” were packed on “lipid rafts” in the cell membrane with people who are depressed. In addition, their brain cell signaling is stifled, which may be the cause of that numbness depressed people experience.

If this is you, listen up. Numbness is no joke.

They’ve demonstrated that when SSRI antidepressants are used, they move g proteins from lipid rafts (I love that visual…like the G’s are languidly floating on a raft in the pool…taking time off being lazy) very gradually, and back into WORK mode. Which is how SSRI’s help some people who are depressed — but it takes weeks or months for relief.

You see, G proteins produce cyclic AMP, which is vital for the nerve cells to properly send their signals.

And, Rasenick and his team noted that the movement of the G proteins under the influence of SSRI antidepressants, was gradual … over a period of several days.

So, let’s take a breath here.

The Many Talents of IV Ketamine

We’ve talked about how IV ketamine stimulates neurons to flourish, grow branches, and become prolific with healthy connections for sending signals throughout the brain, especially into the deep brain structures like the hippocampus.

Now, Dr. Rasenick and his team have discovered that IV ketamine also gathers up the tools the nerve cells need so they actually can send signals throughout this new and bountiful network of connections, or synapses.

Those unemployed g proteins that were hanging out on the rafts, are pulled off the rafts and put to work to equip the brain cells to do their job.

And they work fast.

Remember how it takes several days for the g proteins to move off the rafts with an SSRI? Well, with IV ketamine, it happens in 15 minutes!!

So … do you see why ketamine acts so fast to remove suicidal thinking and depression?

I’m telling you, the more we know about IV ketamine, the more hope explodes with all of its potential.

Letting Go of OLD Ideas

There’s been a belief for years that ketamine’s one action was to block NMDA receptors. (Boy, does that seem like the dark ages now!) But ketamine is the only drug that blocks NMDA receptors AND moves g proteins off lipid rafts. It’s a double whammy, a one-two punch!

Once again, ketamine shows its highly targeted prowess in its assault on depression and its potential for assault on other psychiatric disorders.

In addition, ketamine and other compounds like it, improve glutamate levels, which SSRIs really don’t touch. When the processing of glutamate doesn’t function properly, that also contributes to depression.

So…wait a minute…that’s three actions ketamine uses to turn depression on its ear!

Oh, and the fourth: it turns on mRNA … to turn on DNA … to make more BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor) so that neurons grow new branches.

The Four Ways. Four different ways that ketamine smashes depression. This has brought a level of excitement into psychiatry like nothing else.

Someone should write a book.

A full 80% of those who are treated with IV ketamine infusions in our office respond, and many of those achieve complete remission of their symptoms. But, I’ve said before that it isn’t for everyone. If it’s not for you, we have other treatments like TMS to help you get better.

If you have symptoms of depression (chronic, recurrent, bipolar, postpartum), PTSD, and treatment-resistant OCD and have not been helped by anti-depressants, call or email us to arrange an appointment for a consultation. We’ll thoroughly check you out, and analyze what we learn, to determine the treatment most likely to truly help you feel better. I don’t mean to reduce your current symptoms, but to actually get well.

We’re Innovative Psychiatry. (Um, you’d have to be to translate lipid rafts and g proteins into treatment that works in your office … ) And we’ll work with you to find the best steps that will help you get well and live the life you want to live.

To the discovery of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.

June 8, 2017

Category: Anxiety

Articles about Anxiety from Lori Calabrese, M.D. | The Ketamine Blog

Types of anxiety disorders:

1. Social anxiety

2. Postpartum anxiety

3. General anxiety disorder

4. Panic Disorder

5. Test anxiety

6. Phobia-related disorder

7. Separation anxiety

8. Selective mutism

9. Obsessive -Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Another Devastating Crisis

Another Overwhelming Tragedy

Stress Takes Down the Best People

How Stress Brings Someone Like Heather to Her Knees

MIcroglia Unwittingly Launch a Destructive Attack

How to Stop the Damage?

When they blocked the neurons from signaling the microglia, the chronic stress the mice were subjected to did not affect their synapses in their prefrontal cortex so they did not become depressed.

Restoration through an Extraordinary Medicine

Innovative Psychiatry Offers Expertly Administered Ketamine Infusions

Can you say PHENOMENAL???

Let’s hear it for Ketamine Treatment and Oxford!!

A 400-Year-Old Chandelier in a 400-Year-Old Room

Well, this club became the Royal Society when members of the family of King Charles II got involved. When that happened, the revolutionary became the norm.

Luminaries in the Ketamine Adventure

Dr. Sanacora kicked off the conference with an overview of the literature and key studies that have explored ketamine’s mechanism of action in treating psychiatric disorders. It was brilliant!

Biologically to induce neuronal plasticity (we talked about this before), as a sort of lubricant to enhance psychotherapy, and to deliberately induce dissociation … which can be transformative for the patient.

Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders – Global Conference! Stunning.

Someone recently mentioned to me that he predicts the excitement over ketamine will fade away.

Ketamine Can Make Antidepressants Work Better for Hospitalized Patients

This is the best, life-changing breakthrough for people who suffer with psychiatric mood disorders EVER.

Ketamine for Psychiatric Disorders like Substance Use Disorders

All in all, this conference gathering of great scientific minds, young researchers, and brilliant clinicians was a huge step forward for the needs of depressed and anxious people. A huge step forward for the use of ketamine in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

There is hope. You can feel truly better.

So don’t judge your next treatment by the ones you’ve had before. This time, chances are, you’ll see a difference. And you’ll remember how to live again.

Serious Challenges for an Adolescent or Young Adult

Their first time to leave home, their first time to enter the workforce, their first time to be accountable to strangers on their own, while taking much harder classes than they’ve taken before.

Plus unlimited access to alcohol and illicit substances. Easy access to sex. And the responsibility to recognize within themselves signs of health changes…including mental health.

Going to College with Anxiety or Depression

You still need to devise a plan to help her maintain stability and go for help when the stability changes.

“My Son’s Resilient and a High Achiever. He’ll Be Fine.”

What’s the saying…? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Learn about anxiety and depression just as you have learned about meningitis, pneumonia, and the flu.

Will Your Child Suffer Mental Health Symptoms in the Future?

Further, if kids have struggled through middle school and high school with social anxiety, that anxiety may spread to more areas of life through increased pressure and stress.

When To Educate Yourself and Your Kids about Mental Wellbeing

What if we started now, no matter what their age?

Teaching Your Child to Take Care of Her Mental Health

You teach your children about sex. You teach them about drugs. Teach them about mental health, as well.

Sometimes Giving Your Child “Room” Is Too Much Space

Way too often, these withdrawn teens feel like failures. And what may look like immaturity to parents and teachers may actually be psychiatric symptoms.

Psychiatric Symptoms in Teens

Their parents are blind-sided. Had no idea their daughter hadn’t been going to class. And they wonder why…?

Symptoms to Watch For

Your child just may be too depressed to get out of bed. He may not have the energy to face his life. In fact, he may be eating constantly…. Or forgetting to eat altogether.

Does Your College Student Know Where to Find Mental Health Support?

His sadness and social anxiety held him back in countless situations. He was very bright and did well in school, but socially he was isolated much of the time. He searched early, and visited colleges with his parents. But contributed very little to the decision.

Treating Mental Health Issues in College Students – A BIG Problem

How Common are Psychiatric Symptoms in Teens?

Some People Don’t Believe in Psychiatric Illness…Still

So, if they’re faced with it in a child, they consider these disordered behaviors as a lack of discipline, or misbehavior, or rebellion. So they apply more discipline to the situation. Consequences maybe. But nothing that treats the very real symptoms in the brain.

And again, by the way, the years a student spends in college coincide with the years the largest number of people in the 15-24 age group are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Is there any wonder why…?

The Need for Diagnosis and Treatment in College is Steadily Rising

While it may not be all that unreasonable that parents don’t automatically explore availability of mental health services in the colleges they consider, you probably should place these services high on your list. It’s just smart.

Get Your Student in Touch with Mental Health Services Near His Campus

But in far too many cases, parents are caught by surprise when a child with excellent performance falls into severe depression … and just withdraws and shuts down.

High Performance Students May Suffer Burnout

There Is Effective Treatment Available Now

Ketamine Treatment..?

Innovative Psychiatry Treats Your High School or College Student

Depression’s the Worst!

Disability Plagues Depressed People

Brain Circuit Study about Depression

Anhedonia vs. Anxiety

You can see that though all four groups were diagnosed with depression, that the two groups of subtypes had almost opposite symptoms.

4 Subtypes of Depression

Depression Subtypes Treated with TMS

The Future in Diagnosing Depression by Subtype

Ketamine doesn’t make you sleepy. In fact, ketamine wakes up your brain. As the synapses are restored, signals travel faster and
faster deep into the brain, bringing a sense of well-being along with initiative, creativity, and order.