Category: Depression

Articles about Depression by Lori Calabrese, MD | The Ketamine Blog

The World Health Organization asserts that depression causes more disability worldwide than any other illness. In addition to standing alone as a disabling disorder, it also worsens other illnesses from diabetes, liver disease, heart disease, and brain injuries. We present these articles about depression to show the many ways this disorder is expressed, ways to treat it, and to dispel stigma caused by lack of information.

Causes

Depression and stress create a self-defeating cycle. Prolonged stress prunes the synapses, the dendrites attached to them, and the dendritic spines, reducing the network necessary for optimal signaling in the brain. Consequently, thinking slows and outlook darkens. In addition, creativity all but disappears. Depression follows this process, imposing yet more stress on the these all-important signaling structures.

Other structures in the brain enter the process. These structures in turn malfunction and make the symptoms worse. The lateral habenula, the amygdala, the thalamus, and the hippocampus each play a role in depression. By the same token, depression impacts them, too.

Treatment

Only about a third of people who suffer with depression find relief with traditional antidepressants. These medicines increase neurotransmitters in the brain and eventually increase neuron growth. But the actions of these medicines delay the process and these patients improve slowly. Sometimes, if the first trial with a medication doesn’t help, a different one or combination can help another one third or so of those who didn’t feel better after the first trial. Unfortunately, 33% of people suffering from depression find no relief from these medications. Until recently, they were left with little or no hope of relief for the rest of their lives.

Benefits of Ketamine Treatment

However, ketamine treatment is a novel and advanced treatment that has changed the prognosis for those treatment-resistant patients. Ketamine switches the mRNA to “On” which turns on the DNA to turboboost the brain-derived-neurotrophic-factor (BDNF) that proliferates neuronal growth along with synapses, dendrites, and dendritic spines which play such a vital role in improving signaling throughout the brain.

Another benefit of ketamine is how rapidly it causes the G proteins to slide off the lipid rafts in the cell membrane. This allows them to get back to work enhancing signals. It also causes the cell bursting in the lateral habenula to be dampened. Another process that allows you to experience a sense of reward – and feel better – when something good happens. Basically, ketamine treatment goes to work to help you feel better fast.

Then you enjoy clearer thinking and more creativity. Also a rewarding and upbeat outlook filled with light and joy. Add to that the improved initiative, increased motivation, and hope that makes life worth living again. This remarkable outcome occurs in 65-70% of treatment-resistant patients in general, and much more than that when the treatment is highly personalized. And the results are rapid and robust. Extraordinary.

As you read these articles about depression, keep in mind that there is always hope. Researchers continue to work to find more aspects ketamine’s effects on the brain that can impact the outcome.

Loss of a Loved One by Suicide is a Great Grief for Loved Ones

On November 20, we observed International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day. While a single day dedicated to observe such loss is a meager effort, it’s not nearly enough.

Few losses magnify the sense of powerlessness like the loss of a loved one by suicide. Many times the loss comes after an extended period, months or years, of suicidal attempts. Sometimes the family and friends are surprised by this event. When they are, it’s natural for denial to protect them for a time from the reality of the loss. What could I have done to prevent this? How could I have saved him? If only…

Crystal, at 45, felt deeply spent. Since her son, Jake, was in first grade, she’d worried about him and how to help him find more joy in life. To experience the day to day routine with joy and contentment. To feel proud of his accomplishments. And to want to improve.

Instead, he was a loving, sweet child who seemed overwhelmed by life. He carried a massive weight of inferiority on his shoulders.

In the early years, a child with a psychiatric disorder may show dramatic signs of it. Signs that make it easier to diagnose. Or he may have more subtle signs. He may feel heartbroken much of the time for reasons that are difficult to identify.

He may be often corrected by his teachers. And he may feel like the class dunce because he fails to win their favor. He may tell himself he’s fundamentally flawed and not worthy of approval. Such a philosophy about himself can be deeply damaging.

Jake became increasingly symptomatic as he moved through his teens. He was admitted to psychiatric units multiple times, with complex diagnoses of comorbid conditions.

With each hospitalization, Jake learned more about himself and his illness, and so did his mom.

But once he was discharged from the facility, he might function more smoothly for awhile, then nosedive into another traumatic and painful episode of depression, anhedonia, and mixed states.

He began to talk about dying in elementary school, but his first attempt happened in junior high.

For the rest of his adolescence… his attempts and trips to the ED, multiplied. During his twenties the attempts became more frequent and more traumatic for him and for his mom.

For some people, knowing someone who regularly attempts suicide is tiresome. They accuse their suicidal friend or family member of seeking attention. And when that person dies by suicide, their response is sometimes, “What a relief for the family.”

This response lacks understanding of this person’s condition, and lacks compassion both for him and his family and friends.

Loss of a loved one by suicide is heartbreaking. Devastating. Suffocating.

While we want to focus today on Crystal, you can’t fully grasp her loss without understanding her son.

Jake’s life was full of pain, desperation, and despair. He didn’t understand his pain, or why it lasted like it did.

By his late twenties, his suicide attempts were frequent and severe. He had resolved the only way he’d succeed in ending his life was to use sharp edges, so his family hid all the knives from him. Then he found arrowheads that were sharp and continued to mutilate his wrists. Still, someone always found him in time.

When he finally ended his life at the age of 28, his mother was devastated. It seemed to her he’d had a heart attack… which was shocking at his young age.

That was heartbreaking enough.

But little by little, as time went by after his death, she kept reliving his last weeks, and remembered something his friend had told her. That Jake was using some manmade concoction that had been reported to give a high in small amounts but when overused, it caused death.

Finally, Crystal had to face that he had been methodically trying to end his life; not out of rebellion, or rage, or revenge, but out of desperation to escape the misery he felt.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to live, but he was certain he didn’t want to live like THAT any more. Without hope of peace, of building a life, of enjoying lasting relationships. He felt he was a prisoner in his own skin. A prison caused by his disordered mind.

After all the struggles, all the pain, all the times he got in trouble, all his heartbreak, all his desperation…do you think Crystal was relieved when he died?

No…nothing could be further from the truth.

Crystal spent his life looking for the right doctor, the best treatment, some sort of hope that would help him live a quality of life that rewarded him for surviving all he’d endured. When she realized he had died, all she could think of was that they never found his peace. None of their efforts paid off. The latest treatment wasn’t given to him in time.

She felt sorrowful that their lifelong quest was never realized. She felt guilt that she hadn’t tried hard enough, although she had given it all she had.

That she had to give up her quest to find help for him. It was hard to grasp that the search was over. That they never conquered the torment.

Each person’s grief is his own, and each grieves for different reasons. Grief is so personal, but its impact is multiplied when the cause is suicide, and especially if the loved one was a child, a spouse, or the parent.

During the first month or two, friends of Crystal were sympathetic and offered her love and support. But as the months went by, they encouraged her to “move on.” Their well meaning “encouragement” only applied guilt and pressure Crystal didn’t need. She knew she couldn’t move on. She guessed that someday it might not hurt so much, but she had no interest in forcing herself to stuff her pain and memories to make others around her more comfortable.

Unfortunately, Crystal began to withdraw from some of her friends, because she knew she needed space to grieve at her own rate. To come to terms with all her efforts to save her son and the fact that they failed.

It was a LOT to swallow.

She told herself that he knew she loved him, he knew she fought for him and his hope. Crystal found hope and peace in knowing he KNEW he was loved deeply by her, in spite of his treatment by others. The more she let that knowledge sink deep into her heart and memories, it allowed her anguish to decrease.

And Crystal learned that healing from the loss of a loved one by suicide, that her son’s life ended at his own hand, in a way that was indirect, required time. She needed time.

Yes, while it’s true that some people grieve and never move forward to live rewarding lives again, Crystal knew instinctively that wouldn’t be her. She knew she needed to heal so she could enjoy life again at some point. So she guarded her heart, and her memories, and opened that part of herself only to those who had the capacity to understand and not pass judgment.

On the first anniversary of his death, Crystal joined with her adult children and they reminisced about Jake and the things they loved about him. They shared an upbeat time together honoring Jake’s memory, and Crystal found she breathed easier in the days that followed.

Eighteen months after Jake’s death, Crystal missed him terribly, but was beginning to feel a little gleam of life in her heart again from time to time. The more she healed, the easier it was to talk with trusted family members about Jake, his illness, his beauty, and his mistakes. The more openly she talked about him with trusted loved ones, the freer she felt.

She realized that healing was coming. She knew the loss of her son by suicide was not something she would ever get over or put behind her. Crystal knew she was forever altered by his death as anyone would be after the loss of a loved one by suicide. But she also knew she needed to heal from the shock and trauma and guilt she suffered, so she could live again.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we conducted a study about the use of IV ketamine for suicidal thinking. We have found IV ketamine to be remarkably effective in stopping suicidal thoughts in as little as an afternoon. This allows you to work toward getting help while avoiding hospitalization or a trip to the E.D.

With the tragic loss of life and suffocating grief of loved ones that suicide causes, to be able to stop suicidal thinking… is priceless. You can seek further treatment, counseling, and improve your quality of life with the valuable time ketamine can buy for you.

When you come for treatment, you’ll be led to a private treatment room with a comfy recliner to receive your infusion. A pretty white box on the table will alert you to the safety of your environment. This box applies plasma cell technology to destroy all the viruses (including COVID variants Beta, Delta, lambda, and omicron), plus bacteria and mold, too. In fact, when we say all, we mean 99.99%.

You can be assured you’re as safe as possible from infection while in our offices, so you can focus on getting the most from your treatment.

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, or know someone who does, reach out for the treatment that can stop them. IV ketamine treatment is lifesaving, and you deserve to be relieved of those awful thoughts and urges.

There is an answer that can give you hope and peace.

To the restoration of your best self,

November 29, 2021
Grieving Loss as the COVID Saga Drags On…

If you’ve known someone who’s had COVID-19, you may have also known someone who died from this coronavirus. Hundreds of thousands have died since January 2020, but your loved one was not just “part of the crowd.” Death of your cherished love one is life changing for you. What do you do with the grief?

Since nearly 750K people have died in the US alone from COVID, most of us have known someone who died. Some of us know several people who’ve died. And beyond COVID-19, many have died from heart disease, cancer, accidents, suicide, and scores of other causes. Starting in January 2020, few people are left who’ve been untouched by the loss of a loved one. The death of someone significant in your life leaves you empty, bereaved, even angry. And you’re left to do something with belongings, and find a way to move forward. Let’s talk about the grieving… grieving loss as the COVID saga drags on. Since death is part of life, grieving those we’ve lost is a very real part of living…

Stephanie walked along the walkway, mask firmly in place. She was armed with hand sanitizer in her purse, and a spare mask. She and her family had complied with the protocols for protection from COVID-19 all along. So much time alone in the house — so she’d learned to play music all the time so she wouldn’t feel so alone.

Text messages and phone calls filled in spaces through the day that would have otherwise felt like isolation, and overall, she was doing pretty well.

Her husband, Dan, had worked from home, but his company had been transitioning workers back at a rate of a handful a week. Today was his first day back in the building.

But, he came home feeling bad… aching and exhausted. Fever was 102.3. Now that was alarming.

She got him settled in bed, gave him some Tylenol, and started thinking. This was his first day. The coronavirus would not have already shown symptoms if he got it at work that day.

So where else had he been in the last week?

Nowhere. He’d been home. Who was he exposed to?

Oh wait. He’d gone across the street to borrow gas for the lawnmower. That took about 10 minutes. Surely not.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized she was right. He’d been at the neighbor’s house ten minutes. She decided to call over there to ask if anyone in the house is sick.

So she did, and wouldn’t you know… their son had gotten COVID at school. She felt sick. He wore his mask, used hand sanitizer, but still got the virus from someone at school. So… he brought it home. And in a quick ten minute visit, Dan was exposed.

Within 5 days, Dan’s breathing was alarmingly labored. Stephanie called 911 and Dan was rushed to the hospital. In ICU, he was quickly placed on a ventilator and IV medications were started.

For reasons that baffled Stephanie, her husband’s condition worsened fast.

Dan died 3 days after his admission.

Stephanie and her son, Jacob, felt lost. In shock. Surely she would wake up and this would be a terrible dream.

Shock and denial engulfed her.

They went through the motions of moving Dan to the funeral home and making preparations. They arranged a memorial service over Zoom and let all Dan’s friends know when to tune in.

She didn’t want to see anyone, but knew she was grieving the loss as the COVID saga drags on. She had to pull herself together to respond — to her son, to their family, to their friends.

The tragedy was senseless. Heartbreaking. For a week or two, she felt like she was in a fog. She kept expecting Dan to walk through the door and tell her it was all a mistake. That he was fine.

But he didn’t walk through the door. And Stephanie was angry.

Eventually, as the reality sank in, Stephanie felt angry. Angry that Dan was gone, angry that he’d left her, angry she had to rear their son by herself. She found she was short tempered, irritable, quick to retaliate with clerks, the checkout person at the grocery store, her son, and her parents.

The longer that went on, the more she blamed herself for making life hard for her son, and others. She loathed herself for being unpleasant with everyone. But she was just so mad.

She felt guilty for snapping at those around her, and for Dan’s death. If only she’d been more helpful that day when he was mowing and ran out of gasoline.

She found herself bargaining.

How much better it would have been if she had taken the gas can in the car to the gas station and brought him home some gasoline. Then he would not have gone to the neighbor’s house. Maybe it would have saved his life…and they never would have even known he might have died. Their life would still be stable and good.

Why didn’t she? If only she had!!!!!!

She knew she was just grieving…grieving loss as the COVID saga continued…still it felt real. But so futile.

Was she being lazy..? What WAS she doing that day when Dan needed that gas?? If only she could bring him back. If only he was still alive….and life was normal.

If only…

Depression began to take hold

Stephanie found she lost interest in being with her friends. She just wanted to nap. She took her son to school, then went home and went to sleep. Life had lost its luster. The appeal was gone.

She had lived her life for Dan and Jacob. They were everything to her. All the things she used to enjoy — like watercolors, hiking, school board meetings…it was all so empty now. In fact, it was miserable. Anything that involved people made her feel like she was on display… the single mom, the woman whose husband died. She couldn’t bear being in that atmosphere so she didn’t go.

The days and weeks wore on. She tried to be cheerful for Jacob. She tried to talk to him and listen to him about his feelings of loss. But she didn’t feel she was very good at it because she felt so broken inside.

So she called in pizza, or Uber Eats — she didn’t have the energy to face cooking — and they ate and talked some, or she put on a movie they could watch together.

Grieving loss as the COVID pandemic continues… well, it takes its own path. Grief has a life of its own…

After a couple months of this, Stephanie began to see her situation in a new light.

Acceptance rises ….

Her thinking became more realistic when she thought about Dan’s death…more logical. And the more she looked at it all realistically, the better she felt. As if a lead blanket was lifting off her.

She heard someone say that the answer to “Why me?” is Why not me? That life is made up of good times and hard times. And this pandemic has made millions of people sick. Not just Dan.

That hundreds of thousands of people have died in this country as a result. Including Dan. And just like her, hundreds of thousands of families are shattered because of loss. Not just Stephanie and Jacob. Of course, this was months after Dan died. It seemed that grief just had to take its course, but she felt she was beginning to see light between the clouds…

She could see there was no shame in grief. But she could also see she must not stay tied up in grief forever. She could see she needed to rise up, shower, dress, and take Jacob somewhere up lifting.

As the days and weeks passed by, and Stephanie dove into all the tasks she needed to tend to, she found she could feel the sunshine again. She felt hope beginning to bubble up inside her.

At times, a wave of grief would over take her and she had to excuse herself and sob over how much she missed Dan. But then it would subside, and she could function again, to some degree.

Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? Do you find yourself in a swirl of confused emotion, and feeling guilty to boot?

Since depression can creep in and take over during grief, how long should you let the depression continue without seeking treatment?

You’ve probably guessed the answer… “It depends.”

Grieving loss as the COVID pandemic continues takes courage. But it’s not permanent.

If you find yourself stuck in grief that turns into depression for an extended period of time, say several months…and it’s not getting better… maybe you should consider IV ketamine treatment.

At Innovative Psychiatry, there is no magic cure for grieving a loved one. It’s something we each go through after a terrible loss from death or divorce, for example. And while there there is no official time stamp that determines when your grief should be complete, it is possible for you to get stuck in anger…or depression…and feel helpless to continue moving forward.

In addition, depression can become complicated with other problems like substance and alcohol misuse. IV ketamine can be a great help with those, and make it less difficult to move forward and reach the point of acceptance and peace with this loss.

We offer IV ketamine treatment for those who are candidates and would like to give themselves the best opportunity to get better. When you come for treatment, we’ll meet you at the door and take you straight to your private beautiful room where you can get comfy in your zero gravity recliner. You’ll be monitored with state-of-the-art equipment to so we can ensure you’re at your best during the infusion.

Feel free to bring a playlist (without words) that can run for about an hour and earbuds or headphones.

You’ll notice an elegant white box labeled Novaerus on the table. This unassuming box is quite a hero in our offices. Developed by NASA and the Department of Defense, this plasma cell technology is busy working 24/7 to destroy and remove from the air all the viruses, bacteria, and mold. So the air you breathe is fresh and cleaned continuously, and your lungs are not exposed to pathogens that cause disease. (All COVID variants included.) You can feel safe from infection when you come for treatment, and you can focus on getting the most from your infusion.

Grieving loss as the COVID saga drags on is challenging, but you will survive it.

Grief can be complicated. In addition to the loss of your loved one, the loss may include major changes to your life that also must be managed. Isolation. Loneliness. Perhaps reduced income. To manage difficulties you were unprepared to face, it helps to have the benefit of remission giving you a clear mind to address all you need to.

The loss of someone you care about can be devastating, but as you proceed with support through the stages of grief, and get treatment if you need it, you can recover, rise again, and move forward in your life.

To the restoration of your best self,

October 25, 2021
How Neglect in Early Childhood Changes Girls’ Brains for Surviving

We talked last week about how childhood abuse alters girls’ brain development, slowing down the maturing of emotional circuits in key areas. But what about neglect? Does the neglect of a little girl do the same thing?

The light grew darker as the sun had set and Bryanna shivered. She didn’t like the dark. She scooted her stool to the light switch and turned on the light to chase the monsters away, then did the same in the hall, kitchen, and family room. Bryanna knew her parents had to work so they’d have food, but she so wished she had her family at home. This was the third night in a row that no one was home when she had to turn on lights. (Neglect in early childhood puts a little girl at risk.)

Her tummy growled and she realized she was hungry, so she opened the fridge and found some lunchmeat and mustard. Then she found bread in the pantry and put it on the table. She reached up and opened the silverware drawer and felt around above her eye level. She felt the long table knives and wrapped her fingers around one and pulled.

Back at the table, she worked and worked to open the mustard, and finally snapped it open. Then squeezed the plastic bottle upside down until some clear juice and some mustard came out on her bread. She frowned at the clear stuff. That’s not mustard, she murmured to herself.

But she just stirred her knife in the clear stuff, then spread it all on her bread. Next, she freed a piece of lunchmeat from the package and carefully put it on the bread and covered it with more bread.

Taking a bite out of her sandwich, she walked with it to the family room and turned on the TV. A big blob of mustard plopped from her sandwich onto the carpet. Bryanna frowned and scrubbed it with a napkin.

Switching channels to her favorite Disney show, she settled on the sofa to eat.

Bryanna felt her aloneness, and wished someone would come over or even call. She knew Grandma wouldn’t because she lived 8 hours away. She didn’t want Uncle Jason to come because he wasn’t very nice. So, she picked up her teddy bear and hugged him tight so she’d feel better.

Finally, as the night grew later, she leaned over on a sofa pillow in front of the TV and went to sleep.

When she woke up, the house was filled with morning light.

So, dragging her bear by the arm, Bryanna went to the kitchen to find her cereal. But first, she looked in the driveway.

Empty.

No one came home. Siggghhhhhh.

Does Bryanna know she’s neglected? Probably not. At least, not yet. Once she’s in school and hears about the kids whose moms are home waiting for them, she’ll begin to make the comparison. And eventually, it’s likely she’ll become increasingly unhappy about it.

At this point, however, she just knows she’s tired of being lonely, and wishes they would return, because neglect in early childhood is hard for little persons who ache to be nurtured.

Bryanna decided to get a pen off the table, and she put a mark at the top of an old newspaper. That was for yesterday. Then she put a mark next to it. That’s for today, she whispered.

How many days would they be gone before they came home..?

Bryanna is 4. Her ability to care for her own needs seems mature, considering her age. But Bryanna has been left alone many times in her life. She gets lonesome, sometimes scared, but she solves problems, feeds herself with what she can find, and entertains herself very well for a 4 year-old.

She loves her teddy bear like any 4 year-old. And using her stool, she can turn the lights on when the dark becomes frightening. She knows how to make her own sandwich, eat cereal, entertain herself to help the time pass, and keep track of how long her parents are gone this time.

Like any young child, she might wish to be surrounded by family, and conversation, and laughter. But that is not her life. Waiting is her life. And when you think of a four year old that you know, you probably don’t see such self sufficiency.

What’s the difference?

We spoke last week about a paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry where a group of 234 girls aged 8-18 were given MRIs, then scanned again 5 years later.

They studied the impact abuse in early childhood had on girls. They found that while abuse alters their brains specifically in the emotion processing areas, causing delayed maturing of emotion processing in very specific brain areas, neglect actually accelerates brain development of the entire brain.

Think about that.

If a child has no one to care for her, her brain hurries and advances quickly so she can take care of herself. So she can survive. There are actual changes in the cells of her brain that race to mature ahead of when they should.

Maybe that improves her ability to survive.

You can see an example of that in Bryanna, above. It’s just a fact that neglect in early childhood poses too great a burden on a young child and results in markedly increased risks of depression, anxiety, and other disorders.

(This scenario doesn’t only happen in third world children, or somewhere else far away — it happens right here in the US, in all kinds of families, including homes with parents who have jobs and could choose to parent differently.)

As a result, you see that little girl’s BrainAGE accelerated beyond her chronological age.

Parents may think if they leave their 4 year old with cereal and peanut butter and the TV on, she’ll be fine for awhile. They may even think they can leave a four year old to care for her younger siblings. But to survive, and to help her siblings survive, her brain ends up advancing in maturing… so she can manage the responsibility.

We now have MRI proof of that.

This is abuse by neglect. It doesn’t mean you have a really smart child…though you do. It means you’re abusing your children and putting all of them at risk.

(That tidbit was tossed out free to any parent who makes this mistake.)

Neglect is no joke. No parent should pat themselves on the back, proud of how their little girl is “so grown up.”

The more severe the neglect, the more advanced and matured the whole brain of the child becomes. A little girl living on the streets, without parents, is likely to advance in whole brain maturity even more dramatically, in order to dodge authorities and keep her siblings together, find daily shelter for them, and food.

This is in contrast to the abuse we talked about last week, where yelling, berating, and hitting abuse led to delayed development in the emotion-processing circuits in the brains of those girls who experienced that kind of abuse.

So, to recap: little girls who are neglected experience advanced maturing across their whole brain, but those who are physically, sexually and emotionally abused experience changes in specific circuits that process emotion, and those changes specifically delay their emotional development.

Both are bad.

Neglect in early childhood causes whole-brain advanced maturing.

So how does this affect the little girl? These MRI findings are exciting — but preliminary. They add to the body of research that shows that childhood abuse and/or neglect are associated with increased risks of developing depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance misuse (alcohol, cannabis….the gamut) throughout her life.

Depression and anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere? It may well be the direct fall-out of the stress of the neglect or abuse in childhood. That type of stress causes hypervigilance … and it can prune dendritic branches and wear down the synapses between your brain cells.

And you know what happens? When they get pruned, you get pruned. We live like our biology. You lose energy, interests, enthusiasm, focus, friends, resilience. Words can’t reach you. Therapy feels useless.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we often work with women who were abused or neglected as children. Now they suffer from disorders that disrupt their lives. Severe stress does that. But we find that even though we can’t rewrite their history, we can treat some of the disorders that have resulted from their past abuse or neglect…or both.

We’ve seen it do such wonderful work in people with depression and other disorders. And many times the result of trauma and neglect is depression, substance or alcohol use disorders, social anxiety, or PTSD. Sometimes it’s hopelessness that seeps in as thoughts of death as a relief or frank suicidal thinking. So often, treating the symptoms of these disorders, and making suicidal thoughts go away, holds the key to a fulfilling and radiant life.

IV ketamine treatment has a fifty year history of safe, effective use in children, adolescents and adults of all ages.

If you suffered neglect in early childhood, you’ve probably experienced recurring problems through the years. Anxiety? Depression? PTSD?
Ketamine isn’t for everyone, but it helps so many that it’s reasonable to hope it can do wonderful things for you.

When you come for treatment, bring a sweater and wear a mask. We’ll meet you at the door and take you to your treatment room where you can nestle into a welcoming recliner. You’ll note a snazzy white box on the table with the label Novaerus. That’s the plasma cell technology developed by the Department of Defense and NASA that destroys bacteria, viruses, and molds in the air… and can even lift them off hard surfaces and destroy them. It actually destroys their DNA.

This technology was designed for the Space Station to prevent contamination. (And we were the first ketamine treatment center in the country to install it!) You need to know when you come in for treatment that you’re in the safest possible environment — and that we’ve gone above and beyond to protect you from COVID-19 and all the new variants…delta variant, lambda, and mu. (And even the flu.) While you’re in our office, you can breathe easy. Because we’re on the forefront of innovation.

Music (without words) and soothing sound can deepen your experience. So you can settle in and flow as the ketamine begins… and get the most from it.

You’ve been through enough. It’s time to get better. And to move forward in your life with hope and purpose…as well as the energy to fulfill your desires and live with joy.

To the restoration of your best self,

October 11, 2021
Live with Someone with Bipolar 2 in the Family? It’s Not Easy, Is It?

We talked about the difference between living with bipolar 2 and bipolar II disorder.

The latter is actually the correct name for this difficult disorder, but the first one is the popular name all over the web…affectionately adopted maybe because II sounds like 2. So in the spirit of community — and flexibility! — today we’ll talk about what it’s like to live with someone with bipolar 2.

Have you ever lived with someone in your family who’s so ill that the rest of the family just hangs on and survives? Someone who’s so ill that the parents’ attention is all sucked up by that one’s needs..? Maybe your sister needs help with math, or your brother needs support for his science project. Maybe you need to give your speech tonight to someone who will listen before you give it for a grade tomorrow.

There are lots of types of illnesses. Some families have a person who’s fighting cancer, or heart disease. Others have a family member who is in a wheelchair, or in chronic pain, or is losing their memory. All of these families are challenged, and everyone has to make sacrifices.

Trauma Can Occur When You Live With Someone With Bipolar 2

But in a family that’s living with bipolar 2, there’s another atmosphere. It’s like walking on eggshells. The sacrifices are somewhat different. They can even be somewhat traumatic.

For someone with bipolar 2, the pain is not in their feet, or their back…it’s in their emotions. Think about what your home would be like if one person in your family was as angry as you’ve been when you were your angriest. Or as sad as you’ve been when you were your saddest. Or even sadder. And they feel like that…not for a day or a week but almost all the time.

Then, think about the happiest moment you’ve ever had, multiply it by ten, or 50, and that’s how happy this family member is sometimes …until he gets ANGRY. (Or until he becomes sad.) Like too happy…too jovial. Scary happy.

It can be overwhelming for him — and also for you.

Because someone living with bipolar 2 can change from one extreme of emotion to another in a short time. (If he changes from happy and energetic to depressed and sluggish and hopeless (and back again) at least four times in a year, he’s got rapid cycling. And some rapid cyclers make that swift change in a day. Talk about a roller coaster…)

Some people with bipolar 2 may be depressed for a year or more before they come out of the depression and feel energetic and joyful again. The depressions are long, awful… terrible, really. But a family member who is always down, as bad as you feel for him, is hard to be around.

That’s just the hard truth.

At the same time, someone who is always upbeat, acting silly, making jokes, talking over everyone else, can also be tiring to be around… eventually.

And again, your parents are often absorbed with that same family member, giving all they know to give… and too drained and tired to listen to your speech, or help with the science fair, when things finally calm down at 3 am.

If you’re the parent living with bipolar 2 in the family, you have a heavier load than you ever dreamed you would. Because you live with the weight of all the bills, the dishwasher that needs repair, the yard that’s becoming overgrown, and the letter from the Homeowners’ Association threatening to fine you if you don’t get your house painted…. while you’re stumbling around without having slept. Exhausted isn’t even the word.

You have to work, but during your work day, you get a call from the school that your child with bipolar 2 has had a meltdown in class because a student made a cutting remark. You KNOW you need to help one child with his science fair project, and help another with her math, while you also try to soothe the child with bipolar 2 and help him face natural consequences.

Trouble is, he’s so sensitive. His sense of worth is in the toilet and it’s so tough to help build it back up. To help him accomplish things he can be proud of. He’s so capable and intelligent, but sabotages himself without realizing it.

And one of his worst triggers? Being put down by a friend.

Oh, and there’s still that science fair. So at 1am, your middle son’s helping you help your youngest put together his science fair project. Right. Your brother waited patiently for three days for help, but it wasn’t possible. So the family pitches in to be sure he has something to show.

When you live with bipolar 2 in the family, you’re not trying to help your little brother win, you’re all just trying to spare him of the humiliation of having nothing, getting a zero, and standing out like a sore thumb.

Then you get up in the morning to get ready for school. And your older brother just lays there, staring at the wall. When mom wakes everyone up, he doesn’t move. He just says, “I can’t.”

And then, when you get home from school, and you’re eager to tell mom about your speech, you can hear her speaking softly to your big brother in his bedroom. And your brother is yelling. About how he can’t face school. And how tired he is of feeling this way. And how he wants to die.

To DIE??? Your brother wants to die?? You go to your room and sit on your bed…remembering when grandpa died. When you went to the funeral home. And saw him in his coffin.

You DON’T want your brother to die!! And you worry what will happen if he does.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

There are traumatic moments, days, and weeks when you live with someone with bipolar 2.

But there are also good moments, and good days, and good weeks. He’s the most kind and caring person you know. So caring, so tuned in to your needs, that he’s your best friend. You appreciate him so much.

…Until he begins to change and become agitated. And he talks of his frustration in a clipped, pressured way — as though he can’t get the words out fast enough. You can feel kind of betrayed, but you remember him doing this before, and your gut instinct says this is part of his illness.

He’s sick of it. You’re sick of it, too. (We get it.)

And something you learned when you were much younger was to never argue with him when he’s like this. You know better. So you listen and listen and listen to his heartbreaking diatribe. And you worry what will bring it to an end. Will he maybe just calm down? Or will try to kill himself again..? If only he’d go to sleep and wake up relaxed and at peace…

The good news is that IV ketamine treatment can be a wonderful treatment to relieve the long painful bouts of depression that your loved one with bipolar 2 experiences.

And the toll that it takes on the other family members who live with someone with bipolar 2. That toll can turn into treatment resistant depression, especially if you’re in the same family. (Does anyone ever talk about this?)

IV ketamine treatment can relieve that treatment resistant depression in family members, too. We often make the point that ketamine treatment isn’t for everyone, and it’s not. But it works extraordinarily well in most people with treatment resistant depression. In fact, it can relieve a whole family who has suffering from the stressors of living with someone with bipolar 2 disorder.

When you live with someone who’s not well, sometimes you get sick, too.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we’ve seen people who suffer with long, protracted periods of depression get better, enjoy motivation and initiative, and the relief when their mood is restored to joy.

And the same relief and restoration can happen for you. We’re set up to greet you at the door and bring you right in — no sitting in a waiting room! What’s more, we’ve gone the extra mile and equipped our offices and treatment rooms with plasma cell technology that continually destroys viruses, bacteria, and mold in the air and on all the surfaces—it doesn’t trap them on a filter. So you can come in for treatment with complete confidence and peace of mind that the air you breathe in our gorgeous space is 99.999% free and clean. Because we know you need peace of mind.

And most important for you: if you have someone with bipolar 2 in your family, be sure that you’re taking time for yourselves, and each other, as you help your loved one find the treatment they need.

Bipolar Disorder is a family illness. Everyone may need to get well. We’re here to help get you and your loved ones get the care you need.

Don’t try to face it all alone.

To the restoration of your best self,

September 20, 2021
The Connection Between a Man’s Violence and His Anxiety: How to Help

Know any men who can flip from mild annoyance to a violent rage in a short minute? Know any women who are wounded and intimidated by a man’s anger? Now if that anger is violent then it’s likely lots of women and children as well are wounded and intimidated by it. Let’s talk about the connection between a man’s violence and his anxiety.

Anxiety/alarm.

A good book written by Russell Kennedy, M.D., titled RX Anxiety, is full of great advice for men whose anxiety is expressed in violence. Dr. Kennedy explains that anxiety is experienced both emotionally …in his mind…and physically, in his body. Anxiety is produced in the mind, and alarm is the result that is experienced in his body…physically.

So it should be no surprise that since a man feels this emotion in mind and body, that it would be expressed in both his mind and his body.

But in his body… how?

One of the human physiology’s way of calming this anxiety/alarm, is crying. When we cry it rewires the brain. But what if, as a boy, they taught you to not cry?

…

Tom was edgy, irritable. He woke up in an ambulance, which caught him off guard. They said he had a blackout. Once at the hospital, ER staff rushed to apply leads to all the right spots on his chest and legs for an EKGs. And then another one. After a variety of tests, they moved him to a cardiac unit in the hospital.

Tom felt fine. What was all the fuss? Then they handed him a pitcher that looked like it would hold a quart of milk with a wide open top. The nurse instructed him to “pee” into the pitcher !?!

He blushed, grumbled, let out a few curse words and said he couldn’t “go” in that sitting position.

From that point on, everything made him madder. Madder and madder. More and more irritated.

When a lunch tray was delivered to him, he cleared it from his bedside table with one angry sweep of his arm. Food, cutlery, his plate and glass, all flew to the side of the room, hitting the chair and wall in a big mess.

His nostrils flared. “Get all this away from me!”

In his most secret place of shame, Tom felt like crying. But that was unthinkable. So he had just lashed out…

A man’s violence and his anxiety are so closely connected. A cardiac event can cause unbearable anxiety in a man, and it’s not unusual for a violent expression to follow.

“Anxiety is an early warning system to help you survive… It’s not there to harm you, but in its constant warnings, it makes you feel unsafe.” -Anxiety RX

Tom may have felt angry and irritable, and may have behaved with a lack of control. But what was really going on?

Anxiety. There is very little in a man’s life to ignite anxiety like a cardiac event. Anxiety was eating Tom up inside.

The “Straw” of Caring for Others Before Yourself Can Break the Camel’s Back

This is such a common situation for men. Men who marry young, for instance, before they’re really equipped to be providers for themselves or a family. Maybe a young pregnant wife, or the perceived need to rescue a girlfriend from an abusive family. Crises like this can seem obvious and necessary, but can lead to a man’s overload.

Or maybe parents whose special needs require unexpected and exorbitant care and financial support.

There are endless possibilities of circumstances that could add the breaking straw to a man’s back resulting in constant worry — like where will I get the money to pay all these bills? and when will I find the time to care for everyone who needs me? And fear of the fallout if he fails…

You’d think true masculinity was just calm and collected happiness. So alpha male that it needs not or worries not. But typically masculine characters are always fighting, and most violence comes from some agitated level of fear and anxiety.”
–Liev Schreiber

Add to that, the belief that a man might unwittingly hold that being a caregiver gives his life power and purpose, a sense that he matters. However, he may not grasp at all that the burden that gives his life power and purpose may also break him under the load of anxiety and violence.

A Man’s Violent Release can Easily Follow the Anxiety that Accompanies His Responsibilities

As we mentioned earlier, all these things can happen to a woman, too. But we’re focusing on men today because they’ve so often been taught to avoid showing their feelings, and to not cry because it’s a sign of weakness. (You know men like this. Maybe you are one. Or maybe you’re a woman who has seen this, over and over) And that can have dangerous results

So when the pressure builds from a mountain of responsibilities they fear they cannot fulfill, instead of crying or panicking, that man can snap and become violent.

So our goal is to help him find ways to lower the pressure far in advance of the melting point.

To help him learn to take care of himself, give himself time to release pressure through enjoyable activities, and to spend time with the people who love him most.

Sons Need to Learn Self Care from Childhood to Equip Themselves to Respond to Stress Because there’s often a Connection Between a Man’s Violence and His Anxiety-Depression

And optimally, we need to train our sons to seek these releases as children and young men, before their responsibilities have so much power.

Each individual treatment room provides privacy and quiet, as well as an incredibly comfortable zero-gravity heated leather recliner — so you can be monitored during treatment, and relax deeply for the best possible infusion experience.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we’re here for you, and for the men in your life. And we love to work with and complement your your healthcare team to offer treatments that can help you or the people you love. When the anxiety is seated in PTSD or social anxiety, IV ketamine treatment can be a remarkable aid. And we can schedule your treatments so that you can to get the most benefit from the neuroplasticity ketamine offers to do the best possible work in therapy.

Above and Beyond

We have a devoted program for administering IV ketamine treatment, and have installed space-age equipment to remove viruses, bacteria, and molds from the air and surfaces. When you come for treatment, you can feel safe from risks–because we go above and beyond to keep you safe! So you can focus on getting better. The environment-purifying technology designed by NASA and the Department of Defense keeps the environmental air and surfaces free of pathogens. There is nothing else even close. We’ve taken the best steps available to ensure your wellbeing when you’re here.

Taking care of yourself, giving yourself what you need, can equip you to take care of all those responsibilities more effectively… and keep the anxiety and depression from overwhelming you.

Anxiety is not something to be ashamed of. It’s not weakness. But, like so many other things, it requires your attention to manage it, seek treatment, and be the best you can be for yourself and those around you.

Anxiety can take on a life of its own, and drive you to do things you would never normally do. If anxiety and/or depression has tried to drive you to violence before, you can kick it to the curb.

Please call us if we can help.

We look forward to working with you.

To the restoration of your best self,

July 12, 2021
Feeling Lost? How To Move Forward

In this pandemic environment that’s slowing down and losing its teeth, if you just graduated from high school or college, you’re entering the work force at a time when the work force is topsy turvy. And if you’ve been out of work, it can feel even more fickle.

But at least they’re hiring again. (Maybe not for your specialty but for some.) Recovery takes some time. Do you feel super charged to get out and build your life and future? Or do you shake your head and want to hide under a rock? Maybe you’ve been through a traumatic event, and it’s left you stripped. Confused. Fearful. Maybe your loved one has died. When that happens it just leaves such a hole in your life. You can’t imagine your life without that person in it. What do you do when you’re feeling lost?

Let’s talk about what you can do to get through this time in your life. Because you will get through it. Even though you may feel scared, empty, and adrift, you will find the traction to move forward.

At the top of the list of things you can do is: Be kind to yourself.

Be honest and supportive of yourself…. be accepting of who you are and how you’re managing right now at this minute. No brow beating. No self-hatred or self-lecturing. This stuff is painful. Really painful. Be your own best friend.

What you’re feeling is valid, and you’ll find your way through it. There is NOTHING wrong with you. This time will usher growth… it’s not a sign of failure!

Identify and accept the way you feel. Don’t hide from it. You might need to take a little breather. Maybe rest a bit, knowing that when you’re ready, you’ll rise up and choose your path from there.

Show yourself compassion and patience.

Seek Social Support

Sound like a big order? Maybe too BIG? After all, we’ve been wearing masks for nearly a year and a half, we’ve been social distancing, and keeping our families home. Getting effective social support may sound like a serious obstacle. But honestly, you do need it, especially in crisis.

If you’re fully vaccinated, find others in your world who are also, and meet them at a park and talk. And tell your closest friends to get their vaccinations…because you actually need them! Isolation has a way of tearing you down without your realizing it. Two weeks of isolation you can survive just fine. But a year and a half ?? It gets hard. When you’re feeling lost, you need some face-to-face interaction SAFELY. You may be amazed and the lift it gives you to spend an afternoon face to face with a friend.

Change your environment.

It can wear down your resilience, your ability to bounce back after loss, frustration, or trauma, to stay cooped up, looking at the same 4 walls. One lady drove to the beach, took her aunt with her, and they walked and talked and listened to the waves.

They avoided crowds, and wore masks when they drove through restaurants for food. They kept it simple and safe. But it gave both of them a shot in the arm. Smelling the salt air, hearing the pounding waves, watching them crash on the beach one after another. Waking up with the surf while drinking coffee. (We love our coffee.) If only you could bottle it! Changing your environment…even for a little while…can be so refreshing and help you think more clearly.

Feed your brain green leafy vegetables, eat reds, oranges, yellows, in fruits and vegetables, wild caught salmon, eggs, walnuts

When you’re feeling lost, stay away from fast food… fuel your brain for restoration.

Give your brain a BREAK!!

Your brain overloads when you’re stuffing it with data, problems to solve, crises, diagrams, statistics. You have too much on your mind in this world, but depending on your job, you may need to reduce the mental clutter by… about 85%.

You heard that right.

The world (your job, your spouse, your children, your utilities and internet, your car, your co-workers….) Take a break and unplug in a quiet place often. Just turn off the noise. Allow yourself to restore. No one can serve constant demands 100% of the time. You are your own gatekeeper.

Remember Focus??

At some point in your life, you knew how to focus. Whether you turned music on or turned it off, you took the steps you needed to enhance your ability to focus your attention where you wanted it. Maybe you liked to work at the kitchen table where all the family noice and activity was non-stop. For some people that’s ideal.

Or maybe you needed to be far from outside conversations, the sounds of phones ringing, the television noise, laptop noise others were a part of. But you knew what you needed to maintain attention on important work.

But with life hammering around you in your house, with the kids schooling at home, the pets flying through the house, the kids needing you to fix one thing or another, it’s been different. And if you find yourself in a swarm of humanity and activity from which there is no escape?

So you think and think (and think!) and get the idea you need to write… and a child bangs on your door and the retriever comes running through and jumps on so happy to see you… so you answer Timmy’s question, then shoo Timmy and dog out the door. What were you about to write? You search all over your desk for a clue and find nothing. Can’t remember. Then you hear a crash.

Your frustration is building… where’s the babysitter???

May be time to disconnect from electronics, people, road noise… Give yourself peace. Then find a place to focus.

And finally, when you’re feeling better, TAKE ACTION.

Step up to the plate and do something…whether it’s riding your bike, taking a walk, visiting a fully vaccinated friend.

The day after that take an even bigger action.

Then… something bigger…that invests in your future on some level.

TAP INTO HOPE

If all your effort gets you no closer to feeling yourself, you may want to run it by an expert. Seek evaluation. Seek treatment. All of these things are so good for you. But if you’re past feeling lost and actually suffering from symptoms that have spiralled out of control–depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, trauma that keep replaying, hopelessness–maybe you should consider IV ketamine treatment.

If these suggestions have not helped you find some traction to move forward, you may want to consider IV ketamine treatment.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we invite you to consider IV ketamine treatment if none of the advice, exercises, or medicines have helped. We love to work with your healthcare team for continuity of care. So we welcome communication from your own doctor or therapist. And we spend time with you to evaluate whether you’re a candidate for IV ketamine treatment.

We have a quiet comfortable private rooms for you to relax, recline, and receive your IV ketamine treatment for each infusion. (Can we say they’re gorgeous?) You may need 6, or 8, or a few more infusions to achieve the full antidepressant benefit of ketamine.

Understand that ketamine’s not for everyone, and we’ll talk about that with you when you come in.

Meanwhile, we’re vigilant about maintaining an infection-free environment here, with exciting plasma cell technology which destroys viruses, bacteria, and mold in the the air so you can come for treatment without concern for contaminants. Including COVID.

If you struggle with symptoms of depression, trauma or PTSD, substance use disorder, alcohol disorder, or suicidal thinking…please call us.

If you’ve felt lost… and also have no appetite (or you’re eating too much), or you’re not sleeping (or you’re sleeping too much) — or that feeling of being lost is getting bigger and bigger and just keeping you stuck, call us for an appointment.

And let us help.

To the restoration of your best self,

June 7, 2021
What Makes Ketamine Work? This Research Team Seeks Answers

We’ve talked about ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects. Last month we talked about the role of dissociation in ketamine’s antidepressant benefits. Neuroscientists are studying ketamine to find out WHY it provides such rapid antidepressant results. They’re hoping they can determine what exactly ketamine does in the brain, and whether they can isolate that action from the side effects without losing its extraordinary effectiveness. It’s a long road (rife with trials!), but they soldier on… hoping to make new medications that could become more available to more people. So let’s follow this team of neuroscientists through their quest over nearly 2 decades so far, to see what makes ketamine work.

Lisa Monteggia, Ph.D.

A team of researchers, led by Lisa Monteggia, Ph.D., have studied this question for 18 years. Beginning in 2003, she and her team were interested in what makes antidepressants work. At the time, they knew that neurons released the neurotransmitter serotonin to keep the mood stable. Therefore, if the serotonin level was “low,” that was the cause of depression. (Or so they thought.)

A lot of antidepressant medicines at that time were designed to increase serotonin availability. (They worked to prevent serotonin from being taken back up by the releasing neuron, and to keep it around in the synapse.)

However, Dr. Monteggia’s team saw a problem with that whole explanation because those antidepressants (SSRIs and SNRIs–serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) took weeks to relieve depressive symptoms — when the meds worked. So they realized other things must be going on at the same time, since serotonin alone wasn’t the key element.

Next, her team identified an important aspect of neuronal signaling, as well as something vital for antidepressant effects… and that was brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

A variation of the gene that “tells” cells to make BDNF contains an error or oddity that can change what the gene and the BDNF do. And that’s significant. Because further studies showed that people who have this “odd” gene, can have a reduced, dampened effect from antidepressants.

Hmmm..!!

Now don’t miss this next part of her story: As her team was studying this weird anomaly, another team (remember research was going on globally!) published their work about the ketamine, an anesthesia agent that can produce rapid antidepressant effects when given at a low dose — too low for it to produce anesthesia.

Ketamine already had a reputation for abuse when taken in moderate to higher doses.

But this finding was so important! That at a low dose, ketamine can effectively sweep away symptoms in someone who has severely treatment resistant depression. Basically, someone who has not been helped by anything else they’ve tried for their depression.

So this really charged up Dr. Monteggia and her research team. They committed to learning all they could about ketamine. And they say they want to use it as a Rosetta Stone, so to speak. In other words, they want to use low dose ketamine as the key to understanding rapid acting antidepressant action. Why? Because maybe understanding the mechanisms of action of ketamine could fuel the development of new antidepressants without side effects… Ah!

For one thing, it may hopefully show us how effective antidepressants work. (Actually work, not how we assume or think they work.) To learn the actual mechanism behind effectiveness; as in, something we haven’t yet seen or identified.

The other is that ketamine is known to impact a specific protein in the brain…the NMDA receptor. This receptor is found embedded on certain neurons — a lot of neurons!!

The team confirmed that ketamine blocks the NMDA receptor. In addition, ketamine has specific effects on a certain signaling pathway, and when they blocked that pathway, ketamine didn’t work.

Ok…the process of elimination.

But let’s see what else they learned.

Here’s one exciting thing … and we count on it with ketamine treatment. They were able to show that when ketamine blocks the NMDA receptor which affects signaling…it produces a series of downstream effects which trigger a special form of neuroplasticity in the brain cells.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the connections (or synapses) between the brain cells to change their strength. So ketamine helps those synapses change their strength in new and unexpected ways.

The team has tested other medications to see if they act like ketamine. (For instance, memantine is similar to ketamine in some ways, and it does block the NMDA receptor, but it goes about it in a different way. So interesting, though: despite all that, it does not have the same effect on signaling as ketamine, nor does it trigger this novel type of plasticity that ketamine does.)

They only see this specific type of plasticity with rapid antidepressant action. Eureka!!

(OK, so we’re a little excited here. I know.)

So it occurred to them that perhaps this special form of plasticity may actually be an integral part of rapid antidepressant action.…? And they wonder whether this type of neuroplasticity plays a role in “healing” depression, and demonstrates what makes antidepressants work … Not sure yet.

But here’s something to keep in mind: some experts in the field of neuroscience call ketamine a “dirty” drug.

Don’t panic!

When they say that, they don’t mean it’s grimy. They mean that it works in many ways to affect many parts of the brain — it doesn’t do just one thing that explains definitively how it relieves depression. If they could develop a drug that targeted the absolute biologic mechanisms that are specifically involved in depression, bipolar depression, PTSD, suicidal thoughts, and the rest, that would be a breakthrough!

So ketamine emerged as a treatment for psychiatric disorders — quite by surprise.

This team of researchers believe that ketamine’s actions are especially important in the hippocampus. They believe that after ketamine affects brain cells in the hippocampus, changes flow back to the prefrontal cortex (this part of the brain is behind your forehead) and other areas.

So they’re hoping they can follow the path of those changes backward…from hippocampus to prefrontal cortex to other area. The more they learn, the closer they may come to understand rapid acting antidepressants better.

They believe that blocking NMDA receptors results in that novel neuroplasticity and call it “homeostatic” neuroplasticity. This is a different form of plasticity than the one involved in learning.

And as they continue forward with these experiments, studying homeostatic plasticity, which they believe is at the core of what makes ketamine work as an antidepressant, then they can work with other, perhaps newer, medications that do the same thing…to find more and better options.

Meanwhile, we do have IV ketamine treatment. And people often experience remission with it. So we’ll keep using it, and celebrating your joy, freedom…and hope.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we happily work with you in hopes you’ll achieve remission with IV ketamine treatment. We’ll joyfully welcome you for your treatment, and you’ll receive that treatment in a safe environment with clean, pure air. Sanitized to 99.99%. We take every precaution, like our intense plasma cell technology, to keep our environment here safe for you.

Innovative. Super modern. Seeking the best.

For you.

IV ketamine treatment is just like that in our hands: innovative, supermodern, seeking your best self. Is it for everyone? Does it make everyone better? Sadly no. Which is why we’re so grateful that there are teams of researchers…around the world…who won’t give up, who seek more options and even better ones, for all of us.

If you struggle with the kinds of disorders we’ve talked about, and treatments haven’t helped, call us.

We’ll set an appointment to help you know whether you might be a likely candidate for this extraordinary treatment. Your rewarding and fulfilling life lies ahead.

We look forward to meeting you.

To the restoration of your best self,

May 10, 2021
Postpartum Stress Is Vicious: Reach Out for Support…It Takes a Village
Do you have a COVID baby? If so, you’ve had compounded stress.
Most moms are familiar with the exhaustion (and the overwhelm!) that often takes over when your newborn comes home from the hospital. It isn’t as though you were sleeping great before you went into labor. Then contractions started and progressed to active serious labor. Then the hard pushing. Bottom line, giving birth is hard, hard work. You think you just can’t wait till the baby is OUT of your body so you can finally sleep. WAKE UP CALL!!! Actually, once baby is outside your body, she’s adjusting too. So she cries. And cries. What can you do but nurse her till she drops off to sleep… until 30 mins later she wakes up in your arms crying again. So you put her back on the breast. And then it starts. And a challenging pattern emerges. Baby feels warm, secure, and happy when she’s nursing. Then, bereaved when the nursing stops. And you? Stressed to the max. Postpartum stress can be persistent if you’ve had a COVID baby…and even if your baby was born before COVID.

The trouble with that is that anxiety can shoot up when baby nurses, wakes, and nurses some more. Because you want some sleep… you NEED sleep.

And when anxiety rises, it’s hard to go to sleep. Your mind just keeps racing.

So what do you do? You call your mom, your sister, or your best friend to come and walk baby while you get some rest. And that’s not all it’s cracked up to be either, because you lay on the bed, wide awake….staring at the ceiling…worrying about the baby.

This is especially true for first time moms who so want to be perfect moms in every way but hadn’t counted on exhaustion and stress making you miserable. In fact, postpartum stress can be especially brutal for moms who try to be perfect.

Try to relax and let go. Perfect moms don’t exist. Cut yourself lots of slack and call in help when you feel like you’re at the end of your rope. Don’t keep pushing. Because you just have to break the stress cycle periodically.

And kick guilt to the curb!

This is also true for moms with a baby/toddler and other children…. it can be so hard to cover all the bases of everyone’s needs. Plus laundry, cooking, baths, keeping the house picked up after you’ve been up all night with the baby.

And You Wonder…Where Can You Find Postpartum Stress SOLUTIONS?

Parenting books are full of advice about how to manage your baby AND your other children when there’s no one to help. (Ha! is what I said when I read them, on baby #4.) But, when you try to put their advice to work…well it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Postpartum stress is that midlevel and escalating stress that occurs after the baby blues but before postpartum depression takes over.

If relief isn’t found, postpartum depression can settle in.

FAST FOWARD 10 months…

You finally got the baby into a schedule where she sleeps several hours each night and you depend on that chance to rest. Then you go on vacation. (Ha! they say it’s a vacation….) The changed vacation schedule disrupts baby’s schedule and she starts wanting to find comfort in constant nursing again.

By the time you get home from your trip, you’re exhausted again. And not sleeping. And you’re crying more than baby. Sound familiar?

Stress plus exhaustion is a devastating combination.

First, understand that babies are individuals with temperaments unique to them. Some are easy going, relatively relaxed, and honestly, some seem almost self contained. Moms with babies like this have no idea why you’re so stressed. So ignore what those moms say. Right??

Some babies are “high need” and may require lots of patience. This type of baby may also be colicky, and as the saying goes, it takes a village. To walk her, to soothe her, and to give you a break to rest and breathe.

You always hear that childbirth is a natural part of life…and it is. But it’s still a huge strain on your body and emotions. If you don’t have support, it can be difficult to recover.

And women who don’t receive support during childbirth have a harder time recovering from it. They can continue to struggle for weeks or longer. In fact, a study by researchers led by CT Beck found 18% of American moms reported symptoms of PTSD. We call that postpartum post-traumatic-stress-disorder –really!–and we’ll be talking about that, soon.

What is postpartum stress anyway?

It’s like this…when something goes on that sets you on edge, but it doesn’t happen just once…or twice. It happens all the time, all the time. Like a baby crying incessantly…or children screaming because they’re mad, The longer this cacophony goes on the more it strips your patience…your ability to cope…to endure. And it goes on and on, day and night, week after week after month. It goes from acute stress to chronic stress… postpartum stress.

When this happens, think of it as wearing down the synapses — those connection between neurons in the brain that help messages go from one part of the brain to the other. Those synapses can break down. The dendrites and dendritic spines also break away. You can think of it as pruning, like you do to a tree. But in terms of synapses, this is not a good thing. As those synapses break down, the connections between neurons are lost. And what’s left is a depressed mood. Anxiety. Misery.

Postpartum Stress Needs to be Relieved

Whether by natural means of relief and support, or by a remarkable treatment. Because left untreated it can easily advance to postpartum depression, a more dangerous condition.

What it comes down to is that you need all the synapses you can get in the right parts of your brain so you can be resilient and not defeated. So you can embrace challenges as they arise.

This is why it takes a village. Because you must have support from grandparents, friends, family, and as your baby grows older and is easier to manage, you can help another young mom.

But what if postpartum stress has resulted in damage too extensive for you to find the relief and resilience you need just by taking a nap, or walking and relaxing while someone else cares for baby?

Well maybe that’s where IV ketamine treatment comes in.

Nothing restores resilience like IV ketamine treatment. Nothing restores those synapses as thoroughly or as fast as IV ketamine treatment. For so many. Because ketamine restores resilience by restoring those synapses, by causing mRNA to flip on DNA to turbo boost brain-derived-neurotrophic-factors. By moving those G proteins off the lipid rafts to get those neurotransmitters revved up to do their job. By stopping the cell bursting in the lateral habenula… all these things working together to help you feel up to the tasks before you… Full of initiative, the motivation to do what needs to be done, and the hope for making your life rewarding again.

At Innovative Psychiatry we’re in place to meet you here when you arrive for ketamine treatment. Because if you want to rise above the hopeless and dark listlessness that is overshadowing your time with your baby, we’re here to help. And for the safety of you and your baby, and the confidence it brings, we’ve outfitted our offices with a space station technology developed by NASA to remove 99.99% of the viruses, bacteria, mold, and pollen from the air and surfaces in our office.

We keep the door locked so that only those who have been scheduled to be there will be there. You can feel safe here.

We’re here to help you get better, feel better, and have the power to enjoy your baby, and your family. To have the power to face the challenges with resilience.

Take affirmative steps to find out if you’re a candidate for IV ketamine treatment. Call us.

We’re here to help.

To the restoration of your best self,
April 26, 2021
Is Dissociation Important for Ketamine to Work?

The Big Question

Is dissociation needed? Is it necessary? Can you get better without it, or with “just a little bit” of dissociation? Does the kind of dissociative experience you have during a ketamine infusion predict whether ketamine is going to work? Or how much it will help? …. or If it will help faster? If it will work better….? Will it be scary? Will it be negative? Can it set you back….or make you worse? Can you do anything to shape it (yep, the dissociative experience) to get the most out of it? Boy, what IS dissociation anyway? And is dissociation important for ketamine to work?

I’m tellin’ ya, that is the question of the hour. Every hour. (Or every 90 minutes, I should say. Because that’s the time we set aside for you, when you receive a ketamine infusion. )

When you come in for ketamine, we dive deep. We look for what you used to be like at your best self—really like. Or… if it feels like you never had a best self, we go back further still. And then we look at all of the factors that have contributed to where you are today: what happened, how it happened, what the interplay is genetics, experiences, people in your life, work and the things you love, symptoms and how they’ve spiraled out of control, treaters and treatments that didn’t work out for you.

We want to understand your narrative. Because if you are a candidate for treatment with IV ketamine, we want to offer you the hope and the possibility to change that narrative….and write a new one moving forward.

So the question is what does that? What moves you forward? Ketamine itself? the racemic molecules, the NMDAR antagonism and disinhibition? glutamate activation? the multiple downstream effects involving AMPA activation, and g-protein fast action sliding off lipid rafts? The production of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), and the growth of new branches on neuronal trees that leads to synaptic plasticity and flexibility of thought?

There is a lot of action that ketamine creates (and a lot that we are still exploring because we don’t have all the answers yet about exactly how it works). And it is all very wonderful and scientific. We love the molecular, we love the granular….we love translational neuroscience. But more than that, we love the transformation that we see when science blooms deep in the mind.

And that’s what happens in dissociation.

Science blooms in the mind.

Let me tell you what that means.

Dissociation has been described with all kinds of terms, including feeling dreamy, floaty, spaced out …. Detached from yourself or not a part of yourself, feeling detached from your surroundings. Having changes in your sense of self and where you are–feeling like you’re not yourself but a collection of thoughts or a mind/heart somewhere in the universe.

You’ll hear people describe it as feeling weird, loopy, or really trippy, with visual experiences, or feeling that time expands or contracts. Feeling an ineffable sense of awe. Or sometimes feeling like something dark is trying to intrude.

Early reports with IV ketamine for depression suggested that dissociation was associated with a good response to ketamine. Not that it was to be avoided, but that it was actually OK. More than OK, it was part of the treatment and part of what might be helping lift depression.

More recent clinical research, and the experience of countless ketamine clinicians and thousands of patients suggests not only that is it welcomed, but that the dissociative experience during your treatment could be necessary, maybe even IMPORTANT for you to experience, to remember, to analyze and to integrate into your life’s experience as your move forward…and AWAY from your depression, your anxiety, your trauma.

We think dissociation is incredibly important, and that the way that you recall your experiences during dissociation, interpret them, and look for meaning will help you grow, develop flexibility of thought, open you up to new possibilities and reawaken old loves (like the love of music, or sports, or the outdoors) or invite you to seek out new ones. The biological changes that lay the structure, and the ineffable and sometimes spiritual or mystical experiences that can occur during dissociation can be absolutely transformative. Stunningly effective. In a way nothing else we have is.

Is it important?

You betcha.

Can we prove it?

Ah. That’s another story.

Prominent Ketamine Researchers Seek Answers

Recently, two veteran neuroscience researchers in this exciting “ketamine for depression” saga, Elizabeth D. Ballard, Ph.D. and Carlos A. Zarate, M.D., published a groundbreaking paper in Nature Communications. They addressed the question about whether dissociation is important for ketamine’s antidepressant effects.

To do that, they scoured over 76 papers — peer-reviewed published reports and clinical trials of IV ketamine used in the treatment of depression, reviews, psychedelic research.

There are physicians who offer 6 ketamine infusions at a “standard dose” of 0.5 mg/kg over 40 minutes. This was the early protocol used in early research trials. And there are certainly many who haven’t veered from it.

There are others who have taken a more flexible path to help more people achieve remission. We’ve hinted about how we titrate the dose, the rate, and the number of infusions, in an effort to evoke a better response. Getting better is what matters. Living better is what sings.

Still, there has been some controversy about the role dissociation plays in ketamine achieving that response, especially remission from severe depression. So, we applaud Elizabeth Ballard, PhD and Carlos Zarate, MD for their diligence in trying to find answers to the questions.

Let’s talk about their paper, and address the current position ketamine holds among treatments for depression and other disorders, and how far it’s come.

This beautifully written manuscript highlights the immediate antidepressant effects ketamine treatment produces, along with the short-term dissociative effects that often occur during the infusion itself.

So… is dissociation important for ketamine’s antidepressant benefits? Let’s see…

They say the primary purpose for their publication is to scrutinize other studies and to learn — through a close examination of other research — and figure out the answer to this question. Is the side effect of dissociation necessarily a requirement of the antidepressant impact that is so restorative to so many… you could even say most…patients?

Oral antidepressants have a slow onset of relief, taking at least weeks, and often months, to bring relief. In fact, after all that waiting, sometimes those medicines don’t improve symptoms much at all. (If you’re reading, you probably know this firsthand.)

Ketamine, in contrast, can create rapid improvements in many symptoms within hours or a day. Ketamine treatment is not for everyone (for a variety of reasons). But for those who are good candidates, ketamine usually provides more relief and more remission than any other medicine we use.

Extraordinary Restoration in Treatment Resistant Conditions

Ketamine shows its greatest effectiveness and rapid responses in treatment resistant depression, bipolar depression, PTSD, OCD, social anxiety disorder, substance dependence, and suicidal thoughts.

As we’ve also talked about before, in a separate action, ketamine has become known for rapid eradication of suicidal thoughts. We’ve reported our own real world results about how ketamine can stop suicidal thoughts in an afternoon in the office, preventing visits to the emergency department and hospitalizations.

Chemists originally developed ketamine as an anesthetic to replace phenylcyclidine (known as PCP) in the ’60’s because PCP caused delirium, agitation, hallucinations…and violence. So it was taken off the market. Those chemists set out to develop ketamine in the same laboratory to initiate anesthesia. Ketamine didn’t illicit violent behaviors, thankfully. But dissociation and out-of-body experiences accompanied it and it was labeled a dissociative anesthesia.

Then, in the early part of the 21st century, studies began to explore what ketamine might do for people with treatment resistant depressive disorders using small doses…and the results were eye opening.

As far as the connection between dissociation and an effective antidepressant response to ketamine:

A study in 2014 found that the other side effects of ketamine, such as systolic blood pressure changes, diastolic blood pressure changes, pulse changes, or manic symptoms, weren’t associated with improvement in depressive symptoms…not at 230 minutes, or at 7 days after the infusion.

On the other hand, dissociative symptoms were associated with antidepressant improvement at 230 minutes, and at 7 days after the infusion.

Another finding of note was that some subjects with treatment resistant depression respond enthusiastically to their rapid improvement. But, when healthy subjects received the infusions, some of them experienced a transient period of dysphoria, feeling uncomfortable and ill at ease, after a ketamine infusion.

Beyond various side effects — including dissociation — that others have experienced, there’s more to consider. Let’s talk about the importance of a patient having the ability to access a “non-ordinary state” of mind to fully benefit from the work that ketamine does.

This “non-ordinary state of consciousness” can usher in neuroplasticity in the brain. Where the synaptic connections are growing, proliferating, changing… and this state of change can open your mind to think new thoughts, and to think differently about things that happen.

Like how you feel about a trauma, or a stressor, and to change your response to that experience.

The experiences, the meaning, the imagery often open up new and deeper ways of thinking about the experiences in your life in new ways, and give you an opportunity to perhaps forge a new path.

How exhilarating that can be!

So now, ketamine treatment…a series of infusions over a few weeks….is building a reputation for effectiveness with treatment resistant depression, bipolar depression, social anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and substance dependence. And by a separate action, ketamine has shown it can eradicate suicidal thoughts rapidly.

Because ketamine’s effects have been so remarkably effective in those it helps, it’s inspiring the development of new medicines in hopes of discovering more wonderful treatments for people who suffer.

So what is dissociation, really?

According to one expert, dissociation is defined as a discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior. These veteran researchers acknowledge that it would be beneficial if ketamine could be as effective without the side effects of such things as dissociation. But it is not yet clear whether the dissociation is a core feature of the antidepressant response. Or, it could be just a side effect. Ballard and Zarate point out that the evidence is just not conclusive or clear.

Yes…but what’s important about dissociation??

Well, that depends on who you are…and where you’re coming from. The early researchers showed it was important because it was associated with a better response to ketamine treatment. Ballard and Zarate, in the paper we talked about above, question that because their analysis of the literature to date suggests the findings are inconsistent. They conclude that “the relationship between dissociation and ketamine remains an open question.” Part of the question may be that the rating scale used in most of the the studies to “measure dissociation,” the CADSS, might not be the right one. It was designed to measure dissociation just before and after the recall of traumatic memories in patients with PTSD. But it might not really be the best scale to capture the rapid dissociative experience that happens during a ketamine infusion and the range of experiences —like perceptual changes, peacefulness, bliss. (There are other scales out there that might capture these better.)

So…if you’re a researcher, “important” means predictive of, or statistically associated with, or prognostic for. Then “is dissociation important?” means “is it necessary for response or remission?”

Stick with us here.

However, if you’re a pharmaceutical company, you might see dissociation as just a weird and hard to quantify experience. Troublesome. You list it as an adverse effect. (Because it’s not the primary goal of treatment–remission is.) It could get in the way of your FDA approval, and of allowing your newly developed drug to be approved for at-home use. It can affect your sales. It might get in the way, it might push you to test and produce low doses and leave it at that.

BUT…if you’re the one sitting in the chair, what you want to know is this: Is what I experience during an infusion important for ME? How can I make sense of it? For me? How can I use the experience… to help me? Can dissociation—and the whole experience—actually help me?

What ketamine infusions can do for you is what is important to you. The whole experience — from start to finish, from the beautiful serene setting to your mindset and your intentions (and your hopes and your fears) as the infusion begins — can and should be integrated so that you can move forward and into a better, richer, life.

Infusion. Infused with hope.

There really is hope.

At Innovative Psychiatry, ketamine treatment continues to be the best treatment we offer for rapid relief and remission of depression and suicidal thoughts, and for rapid relief in so many of the conditions we’ve discussed. We look forward to following the research — and working with our own patients, who are often our finest teachers — and to learning from all of it as the field moves forward.

We’re also set and ready to provide ketamine treatment for you in our safe offices. We’ve installed a system that destroys bacteria and viruses, including coronavirus, from the air and lifts them from hard and soft surfaces so you can get treatment, even in the midst of a pandemic, without hesitation or fear.

We titrate your dose and adjust your infusion rate to make your treatment comfortable, productive, and effective. We want you to get better. We want you to find your joy again…to embrace bliss.

If you’ve found that your medicine for your disorder isn’t helping, call us.

We’ll talk about your history, your symptoms, your needs… and determine if ketamine treatment is a good fit for you.

Although we can’t guarantee your outcome (no one can), we’ll offer you our best judgment, and all of our clinical expertise. This treatment is very effective for the majority of our patients, and it could be transformative for you.

Call us and let’s work together to see what ketamine treatment can do for you.

To the restoration of your best self,

April 19, 2021
Overcoming Feelings of Shame and Worthlessness Even in a Pandemic!

Grace had been depressed off and on since her she was a little girl. No one called it depression back then. She was shy, and her withdrawal was dismissed by others as just another of her odd behaviors. They thought she just got more “wound up” than some people. After she was grown and married, the family psychiatrist diagnosed her depression and prescribed antidepressants.

Overcoming feelings of shame and worthlessness had proven her most difficult challenge. She tried the first prescription for a few years, with only a little improvement. She was accustomed to trudging. Eventually, her prescription was changed, and she began to feel much better. So much better in fact, that she considered herself overall better for years. She was grateful to be one of those 30% who were actually helped by medication.

Even though Grace experienced loss from divorce and deaths in the family, and though she grieved, she never became depressed like she’d been before. Sadness was different than major depression, as a medical condition. She still functioned through her days, but felt sad for a good while after each loss. Until she could finally move forward again.

But then the pandemic spread around the world. It imposed changes upon households everywhere, like isolation, mask wearing, and social distancing. Basically, adaptations were required from everyone.

It was a shock. And it was tiring.

As far as Grace was concerned, she began to notice her optimism was diminishing. The resilience she had come to expect and rely on weakened. The agitation and short tempers in loved ones she trusted startled her, shocked her, and shook her foundations. She felt beat up.

More and more beat up… until she didn’t want to expose herself to the blows of others.

And she withdrew.

Of course, Grace told herself she was isolating herself to comply with social distancing, but little by little she had to admit to herself that this was something more. She found herself losing motivation and initiative, and a desire for interaction with others, as well. She began to read. In fact, she read all day until she went to sleep every night. She stopped answering the phone, and went to her mailbox at night to avoid running into anyone.

Heaven forbid she should have to see anyone…to be expected to interact. No way!

Then, of all the horrors, her hair was falling out. Alarmingly quickly. What was this? She found wads of her hair on the shower drain. She felt it glide along her arms as it fell out and slid to the ground. Her brush and comb was full of her hair!

Not to mention, she struggled with insomnia. She was still taking her usual medications, including her antidepressants and a sleep aid, but nothing seemed to be helping. It was baffling when it had all been under control for so long.

Eventually she had to face that she was depressed for some reason, and what was worse, she suffered from pretty severe insomnia.

Why? Where had this come from?

The state she was in was shocking when she’d been doing so well for years. Even decades!

Overcoming these feelings of shame and worthlessness …well it seemed impossible.

As a natural introvert, she couldn’t imagine that the isolation would bother her. It didn’t feel like it was bothering her…

And she loved to read. She just hadn’t had time for so many years that she’d gotten out of the habit. The freedom to read one book after another was delicious. She reveled in it.

Well, not at first. At first the reading was more like something to fill her mind while she lay in bed. To keep her thoughts captured. But eventually, it became a pleasure. Her only pleasure.

Even so, Grace was noticing some phobias in herself that had been absent for decades. What on earth? Seriously??

She went out of her way to avoid contact with people. Trips to the grocery store were hard, but she managed ok as long as she didn’t look anyone in the eye. She had to have food, after all.

Thankfully, her doctor had made small increases in her antidepressant and sleeping prescriptions, in hopes the changes would help.

Along with the phobias, shame arose. Shame at her withdrawal and for avoiding people. Shame for all her life’s mistakes. Boy…when it rains it pours. And she was in a deluge!

In all those quiet days and nights she had an abundance of time to think. To revisit the failures of her life. Those times when she handled conflict poorly. All those times she let someone down. The mistakes and misunderstandings of her marriage, and her divorce. She was drowning in regret, and the ways she failed her children. The shame of her human missteps was unbearable. So unbearable that she felt worthless. Unworthy to be loved, or to take up the air she breathed.

On one particularly sorrowful night, it occurred to her how easy it would be to make her life stop. She had various tools in the house that would simplify the action.

Finally, as news of more people receiving vaccines led to hope that things might soon open up, Grace began to see some light at the end of the tunnel. She found that she laughed out loud as she read certain books. Then she found herself more animated as she talked with loved ones on the phone. Her energy began to return, and cooking seemed easier.

Maybe she would eventually emerge from this…?

After a year in a pandemic, severe ice storms unprecedented in some areas…depression, isolation, anxiety, brought on by isolation… This has been a very — no, extremely — difficult year. Pat yourself on the back that you’re reading this and in one piece.

No kidding! It’s been a bear, hasn’t it??

What about you? How have you fared?

You may be beating yourself up for what you didn’t do. Were you optimistic…or did you grow pessimistic and disgusted with the world…and yourself? Did you find ways to make the best of annoying circumstances… or has it been a struggle? Did you enjoy the camaraderie that came with the awareness that the entire world was in the same boat… or have you felt alone?

Don’t punish yourself!

Reports from across the globe speak of increasing numbers of people diagnosed with depression, when they’ve never been depressed before. You’re not alone! Those who already grappled with disorders found them getting worse. (Reports of hair loss have skyrocketed.)

Overcoming feelings of shame and worthlessness can be so hard, and they can come unexpectedly. The world has seen a level of shock on an individual level that hasn’t been seen in over 100 years. If you think you haven’t been deeply affected by the happenings of the last year, you may have been touched in ways you didn’t realize.

None of us is an island, as they say. We’re all connected in ways we may not understand, but also can’t really deny.

If you haven’t tested positive for COVID-19, you may have been surprised like Grace at some of the impact that still invaded your life. Inexplicably.

On the other hand, if you already were receiving treatment for a disorder like severe depression, PTSD, bipolar depression, or suicidal thinking, it might have gotten worse.

Are you like Grace, finding your treatment is no longer enough? Do you try and fail to overcome feelings of shame and worthlessness? Do you know those painful feelings are also a symptoms of some disorders, like severe depression, bipolar depression, and PTSD?

If you can relate to Grace’s struggles, hurts, despair, and shame, you’re among friends. This pandemic has been tough on everyone, and it’s shown no mercy. In addition, if you were already trying to climb out of an emotional hole before the pandemic, this year of difficulty may have been business as usual for you.

But there is help.

If your medication hasn’t helped, IV ketamine just might. It reverses symptoms for so many.

Understand that ketamine infusions aren’t for everyone. They never have been. Still, research continues to explore the depths and limitations of ketamine. And because of its wide therapeutic success in others with treatment resistant mood disorders and trauma, the likelihood it will help you is strong.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we just want to see you free of defeating symptoms, with the energy, clarity, and hope to move forward and enjoy a productive and rewarding life.

To that end, we’ve supplied protection for you from coronavirus and bacteria in the air and on surfaces in our office so you can focus on getting treatment so you can get better. Even though the COVID-19 cases have dramatically reduced, the pandemic continues. But when you’re in our offices, you will be protected and cared for.

Everything we do is focused on helping you get better, achieve remission, and enjoy your life and your relationships. It’s amazing the energy and insight you can have in relationship building when the burden of symptoms is removed.

Life is getting better and will keep improving. We want that for you and are here to help.

To the restoration of your best self,

March 29, 2021

Category: Depression

Articles about Depression by Lori Calabrese, MD | The Ketamine Blog

Causes

Treatment

Benefits of Ketamine Treatment

On November 20, we observed International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day. While a single day dedicated to observe such loss is a meager effort, it’s not nearly enough.

Crystal, at 45, felt deeply spent. Since her son, Jake, was in first grade, she’d worried about him and how to help him find more joy in life. To experience the day to day routine with joy and contentment. To feel proud of his accomplishments. And to want to improve.

He may be often corrected by his teachers. And he may feel like the class dunce because he fails to win their favor. He may tell himself he’s fundamentally flawed and not worthy of approval. Such a philosophy about himself can be deeply damaging.

Jake became increasingly symptomatic as he moved through his teens. He was admitted to psychiatric units multiple times, with complex diagnoses of comorbid conditions.

He began to talk about dying in elementary school, but his first attempt happened in junior high.

For some people, knowing someone who regularly attempts suicide is tiresome. They accuse their suicidal friend or family member of seeking attention. And when that person dies by suicide, their response is sometimes, “What a relief for the family.”

While we want to focus today on Crystal, you can’t fully grasp her loss without understanding her son.

But little by little, as time went by after his death, she kept reliving his last weeks, and remembered something his friend had told her. That Jake was using some manmade concoction that had been reported to give a high in small amounts but when overused, it caused death.

Finally, Crystal had to face that he had been methodically trying to end his life; not out of rebellion, or rage, or revenge, but out of desperation to escape the misery he felt.

After all the struggles, all the pain, all the times he got in trouble, all his heartbreak, all his desperation…do you think Crystal was relieved when he died?

That she had to give up her quest to find help for him. It was hard to grasp that the search was over. That they never conquered the torment.

It was a LOT to swallow.

And Crystal learned that healing from the loss of a loved one by suicide, that her son’s life ended at his own hand, in a way that was indirect, required time. She needed time.

On the first anniversary of his death, Crystal joined with her adult children and they reminisced about Jake and the things they loved about him. They shared an upbeat time together honoring Jake’s memory, and Crystal found she breathed easier in the days that followed.

You can be assured you’re as safe as possible from infection while in our offices, so you can focus on getting the most from your treatment.

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, or know someone who does, reach out for the treatment that can stop them. IV ketamine treatment is lifesaving, and you deserve to be relieved of those awful thoughts and urges.

Her husband, Dan, had worked from home, but his company had been transitioning workers back at a rate of a handful a week. Today was his first day back in the building.

She got him settled in bed, gave him some Tylenol, and started thinking. This was his first day. The coronavirus would not have already shown symptoms if he got it at work that day.

Oh wait. He’d gone across the street to borrow gas for the lawnmower. That took about 10 minutes. Surely not.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized she was right. He’d been at the neighbor’s house ten minutes. She decided to call over there to ask if anyone in the house is sick.

Within 5 days, Dan’s breathing was alarmingly labored. Stephanie called 911 and Dan was rushed to the hospital. In ICU, he was quickly placed on a ventilator and IV medications were started.

For reasons that baffled Stephanie, her husband’s condition worsened fast.

Dan died 3 days after his admission.

Shock and denial engulfed her.

They went through the motions of moving Dan to the funeral home and making preparations. They arranged a memorial service over Zoom and let all Dan’s friends know when to tune in.

But he didn’t walk through the door. And Stephanie was angry.

The longer that went on, the more she blamed herself for making life hard for her son, and others. She loathed herself for being unpleasant with everyone. But she was just so mad.

She found herself bargaining.

She knew she was just grieving…grieving loss as the COVID saga continued…still it felt real. But so futile.

Was she being lazy..? What WAS she doing that day when Dan needed that gas?? If only she could bring him back. If only he was still alive….and life was normal.

Depression began to take hold

Stephanie found she lost interest in being with her friends. She just wanted to nap. She took her son to school, then went home and went to sleep. Life had lost its luster. The appeal was gone.

The days and weeks wore on. She tried to be cheerful for Jacob. She tried to talk to him and listen to him about his feelings of loss. But she didn’t feel she was very good at it because she felt so broken inside.

Grieving loss as the COVID pandemic continues… well, it takes its own path. Grief has a life of its own…

After a couple months of this, Stephanie began to see her situation in a new light.

Acceptance rises ….

Her thinking became more realistic when she thought about Dan’s death…more logical. And the more she looked at it all realistically, the better she felt. As if a lead blanket was lifting off her.

She could see there was no shame in grief. But she could also see she must not stay tied up in grief forever. She could see she needed to rise up, shower, dress, and take Jacob somewhere up lifting.

At times, a wave of grief would over take her and she had to excuse herself and sob over how much she missed Dan. But then it would subside, and she could function again, to some degree.

Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? Do you find yourself in a swirl of confused emotion, and feeling guilty to boot?

Grieving loss as the COVID pandemic continues takes courage. But it’s not permanent.

Grieving loss as the COVID saga drags on is challenging, but you will survive it.

We talked last week about how childhood abuse alters girls’ brain development, slowing down the maturing of emotional circuits in key areas. But what about neglect? Does the neglect of a little girl do the same thing?

But she just stirred her knife in the clear stuff, then spread it all on her bread. Next, she freed a piece of lunchmeat from the package and carefully put it on the bread and covered it with more bread.

Switching channels to her favorite Disney show, she settled on the sofa to eat.

Bryanna felt her aloneness, and wished someone would come over or even call. She knew Grandma wouldn’t because she lived 8 hours away. She didn’t want Uncle Jason to come because he wasn’t very nice. So, she picked up her teddy bear and hugged him tight so she’d feel better.

So, dragging her bear by the arm, Bryanna went to the kitchen to find her cereal. But first, she looked in the driveway.

Empty.

No one came home. Siggghhhhhh.

How many days would they be gone before they came home..?

Like any young child, she might wish to be surrounded by family, and conversation, and laughter. But that is not her life. Waiting is her life. And when you think of a four year old that you know, you probably don’t see such self sufficiency.

Think about that.

If a child has no one to care for her, her brain hurries and advances quickly so she can take care of herself. So she can survive. There are actual changes in the cells of her brain that race to mature ahead of when they should.

Maybe that improves her ability to survive.

As a result, you see that little girl’s BrainAGE accelerated beyond her chronological age.

Neglect is no joke. No parent should pat themselves on the back, proud of how their little girl is “so grown up.”

Both are bad.

Neglect in early childhood causes whole-brain advanced maturing.

And you know what happens? When they get pruned, you get pruned. We live like our biology. You lose energy, interests, enthusiasm, focus, friends, resilience. Words can’t reach you. Therapy feels useless.

IV ketamine treatment has a fifty year history of safe, effective use in children, adolescents and adults of all ages.

If you suffered neglect in early childhood, you’ve probably experienced recurring problems through the years. Anxiety? Depression? PTSD? Ketamine isn’t for everyone, but it helps so many that it’s reasonable to hope it can do wonderful things for you.

We talked about the difference between living with bipolar 2 and bipolar II disorder.

Trauma Can Occur When You Live With Someone With Bipolar 2

Then, think about the happiest moment you’ve ever had, multiply it by ten, or 50, and that’s how happy this family member is sometimes …until he gets ANGRY. (Or until he becomes sad.) Like too happy…too jovial. Scary happy.

It can be overwhelming for him — and also for you.

At the same time, someone who is always upbeat, acting silly, making jokes, talking over everyone else, can also be tiring to be around… eventually.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

There are traumatic moments, days, and weeks when you live with someone with bipolar 2.

But there are also good moments, and good days, and good weeks. He’s the most kind and caring person you know. So caring, so tuned in to your needs, that he’s your best friend. You appreciate him so much.

The good news is that IV ketamine treatment can be a wonderful treatment to relieve the long painful bouts of depression that your loved one with bipolar 2 experiences.

Anxiety/alarm.

So it should be no surprise that since a man feels this emotion in mind and body, that it would be expressed in both his mind and his body.

When a lunch tray was delivered to him, he cleared it from his bedside table with one angry sweep of his arm. Food, cutlery, his plate and glass, all flew to the side of the room, hitting the chair and wall in a big mess.

His nostrils flared. “Get all this away from me!”

A man’s violence and his anxiety are so closely connected. A cardiac event can cause unbearable anxiety in a man, and it’s not unusual for a violent expression to follow.

**But he didn’t walk through the door. And Stephanie was angry**.

If you suffered neglect in early childhood, you’ve probably experienced recurring problems through the years. Anxiety? Depression? PTSD?
Ketamine isn’t for everyone, but it helps so many that it’s reasonable to hope it can do wonderful things for you.