Lori Calabrese, MD

Tag: IV Ketamine for Antepartum and Postpartum Anxiety Disorders

  • Postpartum Stress Is Vicious: Reach Out for Support…It Takes a Village

    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.

    Postpartum Stress Disorder can be overwhelming so reach out for help.

    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.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • IV Ketamine for Teens ? Ya gotta be kidding me, right?

    IV Ketamine for Teens ? Ya gotta be kidding me, right?

    We’re not. We’re dead serious. We want to keep them alive.

    Maybe you have a teen like the ones we see. Maybe you are are one… like the ones we see. Or maybe you’re quiet. Kind. Smart. Everybody’s friend. Absolutely gorgeous. An athlete. A contender. Someone who’s had it all. Or maybe you’re NOT any of that. Maybe you’re a worrier, shy, awkward. Maybe you feel like you’re always messing up, like no one wants to be with you, like no one knows how to help you. Like you’re lost. Like you just don’t get it. How everybody else is goofing around, laughing, having fun while you just sit there, wondering how it ever happened that things got so screwed up, and that you got so messed up. Know anybody like that? If you do, or if that is you–or your teen, or your sister, or your best friend–listen up. You’re in the right place. Because there is IV ketamine for teens.

    Just when you think that nothing can help, know that we have help. We have the experience, and the guts and the compassion–and we had the foresight–to see the potential that ketamine infusions could offer adolescents who are just suffering.

    We knew it years ago, when we first started using IV ketamine for treatment resistant depression. Then bipolar depression. Suicidal thoughts. We saw it, and decided to really look at what happened to real people (who always have 50 million things going on, not just one rarified condition or syndrome. We looked at our own patients, in our own practice. We wanted to look at our own numbers, the truth of who gets better, how many get better, what does it take– (in terms of ketamine) — how much? how often?

    We stepped up, powered up, and wrote up a critical research report and published it in a peer reviewed journal about what happens for patients who come to see a psychiatrist to see if ketamine treatment can help–for their depression, it was back then–and find that it can stop hopelessness and suicidal thinking in an afternoon.

    The thing is, we saw years ago it could help adolescents… Adolescents who weren’t just needing to take a pill to get better. These didn’t get better with one pill, or two…or a combination of several. And when they didn’t get better, it was said they had treatment resistant depression.

    But treatment resistance is a funny thing. It used to be that it meant you’d tried 4 different meds, then it was dropped to 2 different meds, and now in this adolescent study, treatment resistance was defined as having been treated with one medication that didn’t work.

    We’re glad that the requirement was just one failed medication trial before they were given the opportunity to be treated with IV ketamine.

    Why?

    Because so much is happening in a teen’s life and it’s happening so fast. They’re rate of growth is so intense that a day, a week, a month, of loss causes too much loss. And when there is no resolution found, time can fly by in years, and a teen loses a major block of development they never can get back.

    IV ketamine for teens to put a stop to loss.

    So what losses can they afford? To miss a month…or a semester…of high school? Or college?? To drop out of basketball? Lose friends? Teens often don’t have the patience and tenacity for a friend who just doesn’t show up. Or one who is always down. Defeated.

    Adolescents need action. They need solutions that work quickly. They don’t have the time to wait for 4 different medicine trials that go on for weeks or months. There is just too much loss.

    That’s why IV ketamine is so important.

    When there’s no time to lose this is something that works fast.

    How much can your kid afford to lose …how much can you afford to lose?

    Hopefully we’ll able to have more and more data coming out so that our kids won’t have to suffer so long… so they get better faster. So we can treat them with what is most likely to work before trying something first that probably won’t.

    We do the best we know in this profession. But we need more studies and more information. And until we have it…well, like I said, we do the best we know.

    And we know this treatment has been in use to help adults of all ages for years. But what if you’re a teen? Teens get depressed, suffer social anxiety, even suffer from PTSD, suicidal thoughts, and bipolar depression. And when it’s treatment resistant, the unrelenting symptoms can interfere with your life, your development, and your hope. So we step forward and reach for IV ketamine for teens.

    A study was just published about treating these kids with IV ketamine, to see if it was truly effective and safe…more about that coming up. But get this:

    76% of this study group below had relief within 3 days of the ketamine infusion!

    Imagine what that would mean to a teen who’s suffering, hopeless, and giving up.

    So IV ketamine treatment has been effective in smashing those symptoms in thousands of people. But let’s look at this study especially for adolescents:

    IV Ketamine for Teens

    A team of researchers at Yale University led by Jennifer Dwyer, M.D., conducted a 4-week study using IV ketamine in teens with treatment-resistant depression recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. They selected 17 adolescents ages 13 to 17 who had been diagnosed  with major depressive disorder, or MDD. 

    It’s a massive undertaking to find kids that don’t have 6 different things going on with them… a cluster of co-morbidities. Teens who have just one diagnosis are the only ones that fit into a study like this. Just finding the subjects for a study is hard.

    Each teen in the group had been failed by at least 1 antidepressant medication treatment, but overall the average of failed treatments among the group was 3.24. (That’s a lot!–a lot of trials, a lot of weeks and months waiting for medications to help and being disappointed when they didn’t.) The average length of the current depression episode for these teens was 21 months. Almost two years. Too long.

    This crossover study gave each teenager either IV ketamine 0.5mg/kg over 40mins, or IV midazolam 0.045mg/kg over 40 mins. 

    Then 2 weeks later, each teen received an infusion of the other medicine. 

    It’s important to understand that midazolam (which is from the Valium family) is often used as the “placebo” tested against ketamine because it provides an experience of deep relaxation, so at low doses it can be a bit difficult for the subjects to know which one they’re receiving. (Often, though, there are little clues and little differences between them so that they can tell.) But midazolam provides no antidepressant benefits.

    It turned out that 76% of the adolescents experienced at least a 50% or greater antidepressant response within 3 days following their ketamine infusion.  (Compare this for a second: with an oral antidepressant, only 35% get 50% better….after 6-8 weeks.)

    IV ketamine for teens prevents loss of important moments in their lives.

    Were there side effects during the infusion in the study? Of course. But minor. For example, adolescents who had received ketamine experienced an increase in blood pressure compared to the midazolam infusion, but within a few hours those effects subsided.

    Oh, the beauty of it.

    When you’ve struggled and hidden in sullen isolation, sometimes for years… and you don’t know whether to search for a solution or hide, it’s so darn hard. You’ve missed class, missed practice…because it was too hard.

    Until something happens… and you realize you only seem mad at others — and the world — because you feel so terrible.

    Because you’re depressed.

    And you also may be laboring under the weight of other disorders as well, like trauma, PTSD, OCD or social anxiety…ugghhhh. When all of these different symptoms or disorders cluster and tangle together, it’s so much harder to find relief.

    Then, after months or years of searching for help, you learn about IV ketamine treatment. 

    And you come back to yourself after treatment. Older and a bit wiser maybe, but joyful and creative again. Able to love again.

    This is the beautiful story about how IV ketamine can transform adolescents…and can restore their hope.

    For years, the use of ketamine treatment was up in the air. Respected doctors and neuroscientists were quick to offer their professional opinion… which was to wait. They said that ketamine had not been researched enough. There was not enough information to back it up…so they said.

    But now we know that IV ketamine can transform adolescents, adults, and even children. It can erase suicidal thoughts, and give you … a teen… the time you need to get the help you need to see things differently. To redefine what life can be for you. To rebuild your hope. You purpose. And to restore the energy you need to build friendships that are strong and healthy.

    We’ve waited a looong long time. Too long for some adolescents…

    Even though we need more studies and more questions answered, we have to be willing to step up and take care of our kids who have everything on the line. For them it could be a matter of hope vs despair…life and death.

    We live on that line all the time.

    For all of us. We choose life. We need to choose it for our kids, too.

    Every body deserves a seat at the table for IV ketamine treatment and ketogenic diet for remission.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, we find great joy in watching young promising people like you — who come to us without hope or confidence — tell us enthusiastically after their treatment how good they feel and how their life is getting better and better.

    And because this process, this treatment, is so important, we took steps to make our office a safe place for you. We have technology that destroys viruses and all kinds of germs in the air and on surfaces, so you can feel safe and protected from infection of any kind. Whether it’s COVID-19 or influenza, or strep…it all dies immediately. So you can be in the safest possible environment during this pandemic and focus on your treatment and getting better.

    If you’re an adolescent with symptoms of depression or anger, if you have tried antidepressants that haven’t helped, ask your Mom or Dad or someone who cares about you to call us.

    We want you to find your joy again. To find your freedom and your hope.

    We’re here to help.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Pandemic Anxiety Depletes Bandwidth You Need to Cope With Stress of Living

    Pandemic Anxiety Depletes Bandwidth You Need to Cope With Stress of Living

    We’re all weary of hearing about COVID and mask wearing precautions. Aren’t we?

    About the negative impact of isolation. And while we see improvement on the horizon through wide spread vaccinations, there are still imminent risks, and new cases as well as deaths every day. Those risks add to your daily stress in ways you may not realize. Pandemic anxiety depletes your bandwidth for coping with daily living. The story of Carolee and Jacob illuminates the kinds of stressors that can go on behind closed doors…

    Carolee and Jacob walked the two blocks to the grocery story to pick up food for dinner. They were discussing a news story they’d read on the internet about how some states are lifting mandates for COVID precautions, like wearing masks, social distancing, and use of hand sanitizer. They liked walking to their neighborhood store when they could, just for fresh air and exercise.

    Since they passed a number of people on the sidewalk as they walked, they always wore masks, even when they were outside.

    Carolee expressed her frustration that those particular states were lifting the requirements, in spite of the fact that each governor had strongly encouraged citizens to continue to use precautions on their own.  

    Of course, there will be those who step up and “discipline themselves” and maintain the precautions. But she knew there would be so many… so so many…who would not. Her frustration and disgust exploded.

    “WHY?????  Why would they drop this requirement before we’re ready for it?  People aren’t going to do the right thing. They’re going to just be glad to be rid of it all and do what they want to do for fun!  And the cases will start growing…and more will die… and….”

    You Can’t Control Everyone… Just Yourself, Right?

    Jacob squeezed her hand and tried to soothe her. “Carolee, you know there are already so many who don’t follow the rules. But you and I can only do what’s best for us…Don’t you think it’s futile to struggle about everyone else, when it’s something we have no control over?  It’s really not worth you getting wound up and shaken about something you can’t control…is it?

    “It’s about bandwidth, Carolee. The amount of information your brain can receive…like per second. We’re flooded with so much more to consider about every detail of life than we’ve ever had to. This pandemic anxiety depletes the bandwidth we need just to get through every minute, every hour. We have to find ways to tamp down our own response to things, so we have more energy for everything else.”

    Jacob knew that Carolee hadn’t been sleeping well lately. She seemed to wake up frequently, sometimes walking through the house wringing her hands.  Sometimes just pacing. Staring out the window. Standing out on the patio.

    They’d talked several times about how the COVID-19 variants were spreading, asking questions about whether the new vaccines would be effective with the variants… About how long they were waiting on the list to get their own vaccines. Each time they talked, they agreed to let it go, for their own peace of mind.

    But that was easier said than done.

    To make matters worse, Jacob was feeling more and more worn down by the stress of the pandemic, his work responsibilities, and Carolee’s meltdowns.  He knew she would get past them, but he found himself worrying about her more and more. He needed to find a way to relax. In addition to Carolee, Jacob sure needed some relief.

    Worry. Worry. Then worry some more.

    Life was already full when COVID-19 came along. People were already stressed with daily responsibilities to job, family, faith organizations, maintenance of home and car, children and their struggles.

    When the pandemic appeared on the horizon like a vast dark cloud of pestilence, it pervaded everything.  Those aspects of life that were so routine and required little attention, came to require acute attention often overloaded with a sense of panic with fear of doing it wrong. 

    A psychiatrist wrote in Psychiatric Times about the fear and guilt she experienced when she stopped by the bank for cash only to find the drive-through banking not yet open. So she wrestled with herself about whether to go inside the lobby or park and wait  an hour for the drive-through to open. She went inside, but worried about whether she had been exposed to COVID-19 and  who she might expose through the day as a result. She worried about it all far more than she normally would have.

    Kate Murphy, a NYT journalist, made the point that your brain is overburdened by this pandemic. That things you normally relegate to your brain’s autopilot now require serious thought and risk analysis. And…as a result, you have less bandwidth for higher order thinking.  

    Less bandwidth.

    Isn’t it true?

    And those pandemic anxiety reactions eat up bandwidth.

    If you’ve depleted yourself through a panicky reaction to forgetting your mask when you MUST buy groceries, or driving through for a meal but your hand sanitizer is empty…how can you eat without sanitizing your hands?? Or you’re trying to cope with working from home and the kids are jumping out of their skins from cabin fever??

    What do you do when you keep hitting your thumb with a hammer?

    Those bandwidth-eating reactions are similar to hitting your thumb with a hammer, over and over and over…  because more and more damage is done. You can hardly cope with everything else when your thumb is screaming in pain, you know? You just have to step away from the hammer!!

    Then, if you’ve already been taking medication for anxiety, and the exponential expansion of anxiety caused by the pandemic sends your worry and panic through the roof, well, you have difficulties you hardly know how to manage.

    There was a time before the pandemic was anticipated, that worrying about little things blew up into worrying about disasters in your mind, and as your  grandma would say, “Honey, you’re borrowing trouble and making a mountain out of a molehill.”

    But now, the ongoing stream of changes and increased risks you face everyday can result in outright panic for some, and on a lesser scale, confusion and exhaustion…and dread. This pandemic anxiety just depletes your bandwidth for life.

    You probably know people who have contracted COVID-19. You may have seen some who experienced extremely mild symptoms, if any at all. Still, you may also know someone who experienced serious or extremely severe symptoms. Maybe you know people who have died.

    If you’ve known more than 1 person who has died, your anxiety about death may have filled you with alarm. Alarm about masks, about social distancing, about making sure OTHERS are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

    And what’s more upsetting than people who won’t comply?? You just have to step away from that hammer…

    The more traumatic your experience has been, the more anxiety you may feel about the risks. On the other hand, if you have not known anyone who was hospitalized from COVID-19, exposure may not seem like a great risk to you at all.

    Unique Pandemic Trauma and Loss Requires More Bandwidth

    Either way, you need to be grounded. To let the world take care of the big solutions while you manage the challenges of your daily life. To help with that, take daily walks – wearing your mask! — but get out in the fresh air and sunshine. Take a friend or family member along and talk. Take care of YOU. Then look after your family.

    Pandemic anxiety depletes your bandwidth for your own life. Right now, you need all the energy and mental clarity you can get just to get through life, day by day.

    Because YOUR life needs to go on.

    Still, if your medications and fresh air and exercise don’t help at all, then you may need help getting your symptoms of depression, bipolar depression, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts under control. Then maybe… you should consider IV ketamine infusions.

    Since IV ketamine treatment is at the front lines transforming people when nothing else has helped, it may be an obvious next step for you. And receiving these infusions is a relaxing and comfortable experience. With your remission as our goal, your dose will be titrated according to your individual response during each infusion.

    Pandemic anxiety depletes bandwidth for coping with COVID, but you'll not be exposed to viruses in our office. You're safe here.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, we’re working every day to respond to the call for helping people who are against the wall in this pandemic. If your own bandwidth for coping with the demands of COVID on top of the demands of your life is growing slim, you’re not alone. A vast mob of stressed out, overwhelmed, exhausted, and depressed people surround you. You have to decide what to do about it, if your efforts toward exercise, fresh air, and medication have become futile.

    In that process, it could be that the results of stress have depleted your ability to cope anymore. You may need to reboot. You may need a remodeling project in your synapses to increase your synaptic plasticity. To relieve your symptoms of depression, PTSD, or suicidal thinking. To give you fresh bandwidth.

    For your safety, we’ve installed state-of-the-art technology that utterly removes and destroys COVID-19 and viruses and pathogens from the air and surfaces. So you don’t have to spend bandwidth on your safety, when getting treated is so important for you. Just one more thing to lighten your load. You have enough on your mind.

    If this sounds like you, and you’d like to discuss IV ketamine treatment, call us.

    This pandemic has been hard for everyone. You’re not alone. And we’re here to help.

    We look forward to talking with you and working together for your relief.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Keep Your Eyes on AKT: It Might Explain How We Learn and Forget Fear

    Keep Your Eyes on AKT: It Might Explain How We Learn and Forget Fear

    You may hear people say, “Antidepressants and other psych meds just don’t do anything…”

    Some people say, “…placebos work better…” Oh please. But why do they say that?  Maybe their own experience with prescribed medicines was disappointing. So — of course — they’re disillusioned about these medicines. We get it. And we know that any given medicine that works for some people won’t help some others at all, or might even make them worse. Sooo… what’s up with that? Well, the answer isn’t simple. We do know that antidepressants,when first prescribed, only help about 30% of depressed people. We know that psych drugs help some people but not others and that men and women can experience depression and anxiety and fear differently. It’s a tangle to unravel it all. That’s why we’re so excited about new developments. We want to keep your eyes on AKT because it might explain how we learn and forget fear.

    Meet Jill and Greg to see how differences affect their well being and livelihood:

    Jill and Greg own a coffee shop together and are partners in life as well. They have a great balance of power, in the tasks they divide between them and the strengths they each bring. Greg is a people person, creative, funny, and efficient at both designing new drinks and training staff to make them just right. Jill is a numbers person, and sometimes comes off a little stiff and awkward, because she just doesn’t have Greg’s gift for setting people at ease. She also has some social anxiety going on.

    She does ordering from suppliers, closes out the books every night, and keeps a close eye on profit and loss. They’re a perfectly matched pair and love working together. That is, as long as they’re both at their best. With Greg building relationships with customers and vendors, and Jill keeping the financial end sound, they really do provide strength for the weakness of the other.
    Unfortunately, they both suffer from disorders that periodically causes some lost time at the shop. When that happens, the one who is doing OK ends up carrying a double load. And both of them struggle with anxiety… or basically fear on some level.

    Greg was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder when he was a teenager. Jill was diagnosed with depression in college. She’s a worrier. He just explodes sometimes—and refuses to call it anxiety. Greg takes medication for mood stability that also has an antidepressant effect. Jill takes an antidepressant that only sort of works. They probably both need medicines that reduce anxiety.

    In a perfect world…

    Since their coffee shop venture requires all hands on deck to run smoothly, Jill and Greg are eager to find the right meds for both of them to help stay in the game. They need to be able to go in to work—they can’t afford not to. It seems to Greg that since his medication helps him as much as it does, Jill should ask her doctor to prescribe the same for her. She’s a nervous wreck! However, she knows enough about changing meds that she can’t just jump on another medication just because it works for Greg. She’s tried that before. It didn’t work.

    At this point, Jill has tried five different antidepressants over the past few years, and has researched enough about IV ketamine treatment that she wants to talk to her doctor about whether she’s a candidate for it.

    Considering something new takes a little bit of courage. She wasn’t sure what her psychiatrist would say. A visit with her psychiatrist surprised her–he was cautious but supported her trying something that might help. Jill decided to pay for it out of savings, because her bouts of severe depression were taking a toll on the shop and their income.

    She arranged for treatment and began infusions. When the treatment was complete, she had received 8 infusions over about 3 weeks, and she felt like she had a new lease on life. Her ketamine infusions seemed to wake up her brain. And that got better and better day by day — even after she completed treatment. She found she enjoyed singing and dancing, and painting became her new passion. When they had a problem in the shop, she had so many more ideas for solving it. Working on the book work was no longer a drudgery–she enjoyed it and got more accomplished in a shorter time.

    Jill and Greg’s life became so much better at work and at play. Greg still had slumps when his meds weren’t quite holding him, but their life was so much better overall. They had read that ketamine treatment could help bipolar depression, too. Maybe the next time he went through a bad bout of that, Greg would talk to his doctor about it. To see if it was right for him—not just to copy Jill.

    Finding the right medicine for you is sometimes a long search. And medicine that works for you may not work for your sister…or your son. But it’s well worth the work researchers do to better understand why.

    A research study at the University of Colorado Boulder offers one fascinating revelation about why those differences between people and genders might exist.

    It has to do with a key protein kinase in the brain called AKT…which functions differently between males and females.

    They found presence of a certain form of AKT (called an isoform) in male mice can help the male let go of fear from a past painful experience–and form a new adaptive response to get around the old fear. Wait, what? Doesn’t that remind you of the way synaptic plasticity helps you adapt?

    Ok, you’re right…mice aren’t people and it doesn’t work quite that way…. but AKT is remarkably similar across mice and humans and this kind of translational research can begin to give us specific information to make our medicines and medical care more specific. Potentially even gender specific.

    So you’ll do well to keep your eye on AKT because so much is being learned about how we learn and how we forget fear.

    By figuring out the very complicated cascades involved in creating synaptic plasticity, we may be on the verge of figuring out how to shape and foster the neuroplasticity–for the better.

    We may be able to personalize medication therapies so that they don’t just broadly address a disease state, but so that they can be specific for the man or woman who needs them. 

    Charles Hoeffer, the principal investigator of this study, said it like this: “We need to stop hitting every ‘disorder’ with the same hammer.”  Well said! (Wish I had said that!)

    We’re always talking about personalizing treatment. About how important it is to provide treatment that fits the individual. Just as that’s true with all of the fine details involved in ketamine treatment, it’s also true with all of the medicines we prescribe.

    So… about AKT. 

    It turns out AKT plays a lead role in synaptic plasticity. We’ve talked about that too…  The idea that the connections between cells in the brain can change and adapt. They can change and adapt as a result of an experience. (This is why trauma can change us.) But — so importantly — these connections can also grow, change, and adapt as a result of the deeply emotional experiences, like the incredibly deep and awe-filled experiences you can have during a ketamine infusion. So many of our patients do. We’ve talked about how taking advantage of that process by scheduling psychotherapy 24 hours after a ketamine infusion can enhance the effectiveness of the infusion. 

    Why? Because therapy helps you think differently about something…and synaptic plasticity empowers those changes in thought. Many of our patients also find that journalling, creative writing, meditation and other activities help to integrate those experiences into their lives, find meaning in the experience, and move forward. Keep your eyes on AKT… there’s so much more to learn.

    AKT helps you create memories. Like a child touching his hand to a hot stove. To encode that memory so that he will be cautious in the future around hot burners, his brain needs to activate protein kinases like AKT.

    In fact, AKT is one of the first proteins to present itself to form a memory like that.

    There are 3 main variants, or isoforms, of AKT and they do different things and affect people in different ways (More on that in a sec!)

    AKT1 is important in encoding new experiences and allowing you to forget the old.

    AKT2 is often found in the astroglia…which are star-shaped brain cells.

    AKT3 seems to be important in brain growth and development. This one plays a positive role in mental health and wellbeing. 

    And when AKT1 and AKT2 are working together in the prefrontal cortex, they’re vital for learning, for memory … for dynamic change.

    Maybe like the kind of dynamic change that you want for yourself. So yes. So many different forms, working singly and sometimes together, in ways we are only now just beginning to understand for people suffering with psychiatric disorders.

    Now. To add another twist to this picture. In this study, researchers found a dramatic difference between genders regarding AKT. 

    They found that male laboratory animals whose AKT1 was functioning well, had far more ability to replace unwanted memories with new ones…than those who were missing AKT1. 
    Draw that out for a moment now…. and imagine men who’ve experienced the trauma of illness, or assault, or combat… and imagine for a moment that they’re given the opportunity to experience something new — maybe hopeful, blissful, awe-filled, like they might during a ketamine infusion — and then the excitement of realizing that a tiny little protein kinase like AKT1 may play a part in helping to encode that new feeling. Turn it into a new memory. Make the old traumas fade. (That’s called extinction learning.) Teeny little AKT1 helps with this. In males. 

    Incredible.

    There are endless little nuances in your brain that translate your experiences, encode them, and shape your synapses…and your individual functioning. And maybe your future possibilities.

    AKT is one to keep your eyes on for sure.

    We keep learning, keep researching, and keep doing all we can to help you get better.

    (Let’s just say we read all this stuff for fun–at nights, on the weekends, and at 5 am with a double shot of espresso.)

    And at this point, serial titrated IV ketamine infusions still do the best job we’ve seen in bringing relief to more people with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety than just about anything else available today.

    But ketamine treatment doesn’t work for absolutely everyone. Is it because of AKT or something different? We don’t know. Not yet. Researchers like the ones at Boulder are still searching to understand the nuances of dendritic growth and synaptic plasticity in order to refine our treatments–and discover better ones.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, ketamine treatment is provided in a virus-free environment.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, we personalize treatment to fit you — all the complexity and all the wonderfulness of you! And we aim for remission. Not just response. That’s the reason we titrate your dose, duration of the infusion, and the number of infusions you need to help you discover — once again — your best self.

    When you struggle and suffer from the symptoms of disorders that can be tormenting and exhausting, getting treatment is paramount. And feeling safe is critical — so we have state-of-the-art technology that crushes 99.999% of all viruses and pathogens. During this pandemic we want to make things easy. We all need a little bit of easy.

    So now, reach out for IV ketamine treatment in a safe atmosphere where this treatment can help you live better, hope more, and enjoy the challenges and relationships in your life that give your life meaning.

    You can live a life of joy, fulfillment, accomplishment, and ongoing hope.

    If your meds have not been providing you relief from symptoms of depression, despair, PTSD, or suicidal thoughts…call us.

    Let’s talk about what you’ve tried that didn’t work. And if you’re a candidate for IV ketamine treatment, we can begin that.

    Even though ketamine treatment isn’t for everyone, it just might be a good fit for you.

    We’re here to help.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Don’t Let Stressors You Can’t Control Hurt YOU: Add Resilience

    Don’t Let Stressors You Can’t Control Hurt YOU: Add Resilience

    Turns Out Winter 2021 Hasn’t Run Out of Stressors to Throw at You Yet…

    People like you have been finding ways to adapt and endure this historical and very strange year. Never think that major factors in society, and in science, and in government, have no effect on you and your personal life. In fact, the ongoing onslaught of external pressures can take a serious toll. In fact, the toll can be so subtle you don’t realize it’s happening. If you find yourself sinking into what feels like quick sand, stop and take action. You don’t have to go down for the count. Stressors you can’t control don’t have to control you or even hurt you. But without intervention, you may find it all gets to be too much.

    Take Janeen and Carole, for example:

    Janeen and Carole were neighbors and had been friends for years. They enjoyed shopping together, stopping for coffee and pastries, or splurging on Italian food at their favorite white cloth restaurant. They were both upbeat single empty nesters and reveled in their freedom once their grown children built lives of their own.

    Carole was the more practical of the two, and Janeen was the more spontaneous, but oh, they had such fun together.

    As the pandemic emerged, and as surprising as it was, they didn’t expect it to have that much of an impact on their lives because they were both already so content doing things at home — together or individually. And they did, whether it was a craft project, or constructing a puzzle, or playing cards.

    However, with the spread of the pandemic, they each knew more and more people who became ill from it. Of course, Janeen and Carole were diligent with all the precautions including masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and social distancing. Still, they knew someone who was critically ill with the coronavirus, and while she survived, it was pretty scary.

    Then Janeen learned that a life long friend of her family had died in the hospital from COVID. 

    Three weeks later, the brother of her co-worker also died. Both losses hit her hard. Then a cousin also died. Of course, they were reading about someone well-known who also died every day or two. The losses of dear people in this pandemic were unexpected and heartbreaking.

    You know that feeling when something so alarming happens that you hear about it in the news…but you never think it will happen to anyone you know..? Exactly. The alarming aspects of this disaster were getting too close to home for these friends. And in spite of the upbeat friendship Janeen and Carole shared, they discovered stressors you can’t control weren’t as easy to push aside when they plunder your personal life and those you hold dear.

    That Last Straw that Can Break a Camel’s Back…

    Finally, Carole’s sister Greta called and the tone of the conversation turned sour, then bitter…until her sister attacked her utterly unexpectedly. She attacked her political beliefs, her faith, and her family. By the time Carole ended the call, she was shocked and deeply wounded. Devastated. She felt betrayed at the deepest level. Carole trusted her sister. She respected her opinions and felt support from her so fundamentally, that she had always been confident they would never treat each other with disrespect. 

    Carole told herself her sister was just having a bad day. Or maybe the stressors of everything happening were wearing down Greta, too..? At any rate, Carole felt silly that she was so hurt by the things her sister said. She’d never been one to be so touchy with her family, to have her feelings on her cuff.

    But… for Carole, it was as if the clouds had covered the sun. The shades on her life had been drawn. And the light that had normally shone on her days disappeared. Carole didn’t understand what was happening to her. But the color in life had turned shades of gray.

    There was no reason to take her sister’s verbal assault so personally. But still, her outlook deteriorated. She couldn’t seem to help it.

    She read on the internet that depression seemed to be on the rise with COVID…and she wondered if that was happening to her for some inexplicable reason. It was as if she had lost her zest for life. As the days and weeks passed,  she realized she didn’t really care what her sister did…or what Janeen did. She felt so deflated she didn’t want to get out of bed. 

    So she didn’t. 

    Carole’s highly energized and determined personality went limp. Sad. Empty. 

    As days, weeks, and months passed, Carole knew she had become withdrawn. But she didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter.

    Eventually, she realized she didn’t see any reason to keep living. Her children were living their own lives now, and she was no longer needed. She thought sometimes about how the end of life would come for her. Would she just not wake up one day?

    Or develop a catastrophic disease?  Then she realized she didn’t really have to wait…

    So she wondered how hard it would be to just put a STOP to her life.  To be released from the phenomenal stress she’d lived with.

    The more those thoughts built in her mind, the more reasonable they sounded to her.

    Janeen checked on her regularly, but Carole tried to end those contacts quickly. She just didn’t want to talk, visit, or exert any energy at all. She wished she could just sort of fade away.

    Above all, though, she knew she didn’t want to do anything that caused her family pain… Still, she continued to think about it…

    Another Perspective on Stress

    We talk about stress. How it can defeat otherwise unsinkable people. How it can reduce immunity and how it can contribute to disorders like depression, panic disorder, PTSD, alcohol use disorder, bipolar depression, social anxiety disorder, and suicidal thoughts. Stressors you can’t control are so much more difficult than those you can. And the helplessness that accompanies them does its own damage.

    When we look back in history to extremely stressful situations, we see how severe stressors can lead to suicide in masses of people. For instance, the stock market crash of 1929 for example, illustrates how extreme stress contributed to psychiatric crises for countless people.

    This winter — 2021 — has been a “perfect storm” of circumstances with the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, flu season, the COVID variants, remote learning at home for kids, remote working from home, (where stressed parents try to do their job while supervising their children in the same space) and now a historical series of severe arctic storms sweeping from coast to coast, with snow, sleet, and ice causing life threatening traffic pileups, a break down in transportation of goods and services, preventing communities from having what they need… plus a presidential election and an impeachment.

    This is proving to be the most stressful, crisis-ridden winter this nation has seen in a very long time. And everyone is facing stressors they can’t control.

    And all this stress is dangerous. 

    Some people have taken every precaution to try to maintain health and safety, and to help contain the fallout of each of these crises.  Others have all but thumbed their noses at the need for precaution, and so many others have fallen somewhere in between. 

    Most people are relatively resilient, and will weather whatever is thrown across their path. But if major stressors are tossed at them day after day, week after week, month after month…eventually they’ll need some sort of relief…a break to recover.

    In this particular winter of 2020/2021, we may find ourselves isolated or quarantined. But we still need that break. We need to reach out for relief.

    By building a network of people we look forward to talking and laughing with online. Or writing for self-fulfillment and to draw interaction from others, or cooking meals and delivering them to neighbors nearby. 

    Stressors you can't control can hurt without resilience. Ketamine treatment restores.
    We all need to give. We all need to receive. And we all need feedback.  When we give, receive, and participate in feedback…well, those are stressors we can control…so they help.
    When the things we need as humans are accessible and balanced in our lives, it’s easier to maintain a certain equilibrium. 

    But our human needs aren’t always easy to fulfill, and as stressors pile high upon us, we may need more to help us survive.

    We may need a treatment to help restore equilibrium. These are highly stressful times for many, many people for a multitude of reasons. While we need to lean into our support system and find it’s not in place, we may need extra support.

    Something that IV ketamine treatment excels at is resilience. And resilience chases away the clouds of disillusionment and despair. It helps you bounce back after disappointment and devastation. You may have an abundance of resilience already. But if you don’t, ketamine treatment can sure restore it and arm you for what you face when you’re confronted with stressors you can’t control.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, resilience is a remarkable and startling bloom we often see in our ketamine patients. After years of living in a slump, stripped of courage, patience, hope, purpose…to see the same person develop a bright and open countenance, to hear the laughter in his voice, the hope, the confidence…the warmth; to see a life changed so splendidly makes what we do so rewarding.

    While ketamine is not effective for everyone — we so wish it was! — its extraordinary impact is life-transforming for many. Neuroscience researchers continue to probe to find reasons for those it doesn’t help.

    We also have protocols to ensure your safety when you come to our office for treatment. With Novaerus units in each room that remove the coronavirus from the air you breathe, and surfaces treated by Steramist, which removes 99.999% of all the virus, bacteria, and dangerous pathogens from ALL surfaces, we are diligent about keeping our air clean. We all wear masks, and keep the door locked. We’ve made so many changes… and reinvent down to the smallest details.

    You can feel secure knowing that, so you can seek treatment for your depression, PTSD, social anxiety, and suicidal thinking symptoms without fear of COVID infection.

    When it seems that the things in life you could always trust seem to fall around you, and the dread of it wears down your ability to try anymore, you might want to call us.

    You might want to discuss your options for getting your resilience back.

    And if you do, we’ll do our best to help you navigate your way through the barrage.

    To find the best you to face the circumstances around you and the stressors you can’t control.

    We look forward to talking with you.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Why Are Anxiety and Depression so Prominent in This COVID Pandemic?

    Why Are Anxiety and Depression so Prominent in This COVID Pandemic?

    What makes it so hard?

    Anxiety and depression are so prominent in a pandemic.

    Devon tuned into his department meeting. Another Zoom meeting. He was so tired of online meetings…the technical lapses, interruptions…  you can read people so much easier face to face. At the same time, he could sit in an easy chair for the meetings, so that wasn’t so bad. But no one seemed like themselves. Anxiety and depression are so prominent and have clearly taken their toll on his colleagues.

    Still, maybe there’s also a palpable energy in face-to-face meetings. He wasn’t sure if that was the problem or not, but Devon found it more and more difficult to focus, and to think creatively for his job. As the year had passed, he felt less and less capable and more like dead weight. 

    He kept asking himself what was wrong with him? Where were the sparks that flew when he dove into a problem?  Rather than sparks, Devon felt more like a dud.

    Then, he got the phone call about his next door neighbor’s son. Just like Devon’s family, his neighbor’s son was taking his high school classes at home, and online. At first, the young man Stewart, had stopped logging in to classes. Devon had heard this was becoming more and more of a problem in his community. 

    But, apparently Stewart was becoming more and more depressed. Devon just learned yesterday the boy had ended his life…right there at home.

    The grief settled over Devon like a black fog. This on top of the recent deaths from COVID-19 of two of his friends, 10 days apart. But Stewart was 15. His whole life was ahead of him. It was all too tragic.

    COVID Tragedies Can Trigger Anxiety and Depression

    He’d watched the boy grow up, playing with his own kids over the years. And it stirred up more worry about Devon’s own family. He and his wife had tried to keep a close eye on their children to be sure they logged in to school and did their work.

    But, they couldn’t be everywhere and they both worked online. But they tried. Still, life was becoming increasingly overwhelming. His heart went out to Stewart’s family. And he felt a low, sinister rumble of trepidation within himself. The dangers of the pandemic went far beyond the risk of getting sick with the virus. 

    The fear of becoming too depressed to function, or of his family succumbing to it, rose inside him till his  ears were buzzing.

    All in all, Devon knew he had to keep functioning, and presenting a solid, unified front with his wife. He also knew the danger of drowning in it all. When his meeting ended, he called a highly recommended psychiatrist for a consultation appointment. He wanted to be proactive, before it was too late to think straight.

    There’s just something about a pandemic that can make happy people depressed or relaxed people overwhelmed with anxiety.

    We’ve talked about it before. In the early months of COVID-19, that the circumstances that accompany a widespread environment like this can lead to your symptoms worsening. It can also lead to symptoms you never suffered before. Anxiety and depression are so prominent these days.

    Well, at this point, this global state of affairs has been causing stressors that aren’t new anymore. But they do go on and on and on….and on…

    And periodically, we need to stop and take a breath and ask how you’re doing?

    At this point, there have been 99,195,630 COVID-19 cases globally, with 2.1 million deaths. In the US, 25.2 million cases, and over 419 thousand deaths. The numbers are staggering. And the scale of this pandemic is difficult to grasp.

    These are people. Our teachers, our friends, our neighbors, our families. Grandparents. Parents. Our children.

    And…since we are a species with both mind and body, it stands to reason— doesn’t it? —that both our minds and our bodies are impacted by this. With anxiety about sickness, anxiety about isolation, anxiety about lifestyle change and lack of spontaneous freedom, it does stand to reason that the problems and stress factors would pile up and also lead to depression. Anxiety and depression are so prominent these days…and they often go together.

    We’ve watched a 1st wave of COVID spread, then a 2nd wave, then a 3rd…and it’s not over. The virus changes, mutates, and different strains have varying impacts. Some cause milder symptoms, some spread much faster, some cause more severe symptoms. It goes without saying that all this has affected you…and all of us,

    Most of us know people who have had the COVID-19 virus, and many of us have seen our friends and loved ones die because of it. This is a traumatic time that none of us will forget.

    Research Helps Us Understand the Impact of a Tragic and Stressful Experience

    A group of Danish researchers in Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark led by Søren Østergaard conducted a survey during each of those 3 waves to better understand the variation in psychological well-being regarding symptoms of anxiety and depression during this pandemic, among participants in Denmark. 

    Their results were relevant to the global community, even though severity of the disease hasn’t been equal everywhere.

    They reported results of the survey for wave 1 (March 31st to April 6th), wave 2 (April 22 – April 30th), and wave 3 (November 20 – December 8 … just last month.)

    The 1554 respondents were an average age of 49.5.

    There was a statistically significant decline in psychological well being from wave 2 to wave 3, especially with men. And during wave 3, worry, anxiety, and hopelessness decreased over those levels in wave 2, but feelings of guilt increased.

    Anxiety and depression have been prominent in Denmark, too.

    In a nutshell, these researchers ended the paper with the statement that by late November to early December, the psychological well being of the Danish population had fallen again to the level of March/April, when it had been at its lowest.

    Overall, they found that when COVID cases are high, and the measures to reduce the spread of the virus like quarantine, isolation, social distancing, and major lockdowns are the most widespread, there is a significant impairment of psychological wellbeing.

    What Can You Do with This Information?

    Setting aside the particulars of a study in Denmark, and focusing on right here in the US, we need to find ways to intervene in your own state of mind. Your own wellbeing.

    Gather online with friends and family to interact for online chess. Talk and laugh together. Watch your grand babies blow bubbles.  Share a spaghetti dinner, complete with candles, where each participant cooks at home then all connect and chat while eating.

    Social interaction is fundamental to your well being. When you share a meal on Zoom, you don’t have to wear a mask!

    Even so, if this ongoing pandemic seems to be having a serious impact with depression, social anxiety, hopelessness, even suicidal thinking, ketamine infusions may be able to turn that around and refresh your resilience. There is still hope.

    Anxiety and depression so prevalent during pandemic

    At Innovative Psychiatry,  we’re all about helping you get a leg-up to manage these challenging times, and meet the frustrations in your life with flexibility and peace. We offer IV ketamine treatment — after a thorough screening and evaluation — to those whom we determine are good candidates for ketamine’s extraordinary benefits. Ketamine treatment is not for everyone, because circumstances as well as the medical and psychiatric history of some patients indicate ketamine is not the right choice. However, it can be so helpful to so many…it can be transformative.

    We provide a safe place for treatment. We now test our staff at least once each week to verify they are COVID free… We can also refer our patients to a local DNA lab that will do same day PCR testing for those patients who wish it. In addition, we installed technology that destroys the coronavirus and all viruses and bacteria in the air and on all surfaces fast.

    Our goal is to help you get better and to keep you safe.

    You have struggled, tried to break through, tried to carry the anxious and depressive symptoms that have weighed you down for a long, long time. We want to help you put that struggle in your past. So you can feel restored. So that you can be your best self. To have the energy, freedom, and hope to build your life again with creativity and joy…and to have the resilience to move from day to day and week to week.

    You needn’t postpone it any longer. Call us.

    We can answer your questions and sort out the possibilities together.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Wake up and Dream Your Most Heartfelt Dreams This Holiday Season

    Wake up and Dream Your Most Heartfelt Dreams This Holiday Season

    A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep…

    At least that’s what Cinderella sang, in Disney’s classic animated movie. But… the kind of dreams you have when you’re fast asleep are actually different than the dreams your heart makes. This is the week of Christmas, which has filled children’s dreams with sugar plum fairies and their favorite toys for centuries. It’s also the Christmas of the pandemic of 2020, which has had its own impact on dreaming. We’re living history right now; yet we’re also building our futures. So maybe we should all wake up and dream to make our lives better.

    But you’re not Cinderella or her Prince Charming. You’re you…and you live in the real world. And in a global pandemic, no less.

    You may know Jaxon. He’s been struggling to get his feet on the ground as long as he can remember. He’s tried one job after another, year after year. But during the COVID pandemic with its lack of job security, he’s realized he’s sick and tired of feeling he has no control in his life. So he’s decided to wake up and dream. He plans to take his uncle up on the offer to pay for his training as an airline mechanic. Jaxon is good with engines, and has been studying jet engines.  So as soon as the pandemic eases, he’s going to enroll in training. It will improve his life, and the life of his family. And he’s chomping at the bit to realize his dream.

    Then there’s Cheryl. She’s always dreamed of furthering her education so she can be a nurse practitioner or Advanced Practice nurse. She’s already a registered nurse with a Bachelor of Science degree. It will be a long road to earn the Advance Practice status, or Nurse Practitioner degree. But she wants more out of life. So she decided to not give up but wake up and dream. And the exhaustion of the COVID pandemic has shown her she wants to specialize and do her best work, as well as improve her income for her family’s sake. Her dream is to specialize in pediatrics. So she has begun taking online courses now to move toward that goal.

    After 10 months of COVID-19 this year, many have become discouraged and lost the pluck it takes to visualize life beyond this. Dreams of what we want to accomplish, or create…or overcome.  These are the dreams that are a wish your heart makes….

    “I want to own my own business…”

    “My wish is for a promotion..”

    “Wishing for a spouse and family…”

    “Someday, I’ll have my own daycare center.”

    “My dream is to be a doctor.”

    “I’m hoping to manage my symptoms so I can feel others respect me and I can build a life I’m proud of.”

    A dream is a wish your heart makes… it’s something you don’t have now, but wish you did. Something that you’re willing to wait for…and to work for… that you believe would improve your life.

    Your dream is the shape and color scheme of your hope. Hope says, “Life will get better.”

    Your dream determines HOW it will get better.

    A book published this year called Dream Big, written by the New York Times best selling author Bob Goff, is so timely for the pandemic and the stress you may feel. Actually, it’s called Dream Big: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You’re Going To Do About It.

    Of course, it may not be that easy to know what you want. What you wish. What your big dream is. But it’s worth it to dig deep and figure it out.  You have to figure out what that dream is to figure out if it’s worth it to you to fight for it. 

    And figuring out why it matters is a good step toward putting down roots for the future you dream of. 

    Then, you’ll start taking steps. Because that dream is your lifeblood and fuel.

    It’s timely that this book was published this year — 2020 — because so many have been so overwhelmed by the status quo of the pandemic, world economics, and politics, that they’ve given up the fight.  Their energy is drained, along with their determination and strength to move forward.

    But right now, in 2020, is the time to DREAM.  Not hide, not go to sleep. And certainly not give up. But since COVID has seeped into daily life, it may seem to you that it’s too late to fight.

    But you can stretch beyond the limitations you see around you in the pandemic. Reach far. Seek new possibilities. Dream big.

    It’s never too late to fight for YOU.

    Think of the time you have now to reevaluate and restructure your life plan. This is the time to decide if you want your life to continue, business-as-usual, or do you want to find ways to enjoy more, love more, help more.

    Right now is the time to make those decisions. The ones that pursue your dreams.  Because as the COVID vaccinations reach more people and the presence of this illness is reduced, and society becomes able to move around again… you’ll need to already be in your stride with your new plans, your new life style.

    But there’s another facet. And that’s the fact that symptoms prevent some hard working people from pursuing their dreams. In fact, severe symptoms of anxiety or depression can muddle a person’s ability to even form his own dream.

    When that happens, that person may need the treatment to get his symptoms under control so he can move forward toward his own fulfilling life.

    Depression and bipolar depression are two more disorders that can interfere with your power to pursue your dream.  Social anxiety can do that, too.

    PTSD is an example of a disorder that can severely block progress toward the fulfillment of a dream…or even forming one to pursue.

    IV ketamine treatment has well documented evidence for treating and relieving the symptoms of these disorders. It turns on mRNA which switches DNA to “ON” to turbo boost brain-derived-neurotrophic-factors which go to work proliferating the synapses (connections between brain cells) throughout your brain.

    Your brain wakes up, and signals light up your brain as they carry messages everywhere at high speed. You feel joy, you feel creative, you have a renewed ability to invest in your work and healthy relationships. You can wake up and dream because you have hope.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, we’re gratified to watch people come alive with hope and purpose after IV ketamine treatment. We offer this remarkable life-changing treatment in a safe atmosphere where we’ve invested in VB Enviro Care’s plasma cell technology that removes all COVID virus particles (in fact all viruses, bacteria, and mold) from the air and the surfaces in our offices.

    I know it sounds a little sci-fi and actually… it is. This technology was developed at MIT and NASA to fight biological warfare, and it’s extremely effective. You’re safe here and you can be treated without fear.

    We understand that the pandemic has taken a toll both emotionally and physically on so many and we want to help you restore, and achieve remission from your symptoms. So you can wake up and dream, and invest in the life you want to live.

    Ketamine doesn’t work for everyone. No treatment or medicine does. But it is so effective for the majority of patients who suffer from severe symptoms. It can be extraordinarily effective when everything else has failed.

    If you suffer from symptoms of severe depression, bipolar depression, PTSD, social anxiety, alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder, or suicidal thinking, call us.

    You can schedule appointments for IV ketamine treatment without a long wait…usually just a few days.

    Start 2021 hopeful, and empowered to live your life as your best self.

    We’re here to help so you can live a truly rewarding life.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Explore: Method to Differentiate Bipolar Depression vs Unipolar Depression

    Explore: Method to Differentiate Bipolar Depression vs Unipolar Depression

    As you may know, May is mental health month.

    IV ketamine can restore her joy whether it's bipolar depression vs unipolar depression.

    And as such, it’s a good time to talk about symptoms of mental health disorders, don’t you think? We want to increase understanding and dispel stigma which will help people who suffer gain better access to the help they need. Stigma is steeped in ignorance about something someone doesn’t understand. In addition, the global circumstances of these last few months have impacted the mental health status of so many. So let’s use this month to broaden understanding and better equip us to respond to ourselves and those around us. So here’s something to talk about: A new way to differentiate bipolar depression vs. unipolar depression may be emerging.

    Leading Cause of Disability

    The leading cause of disability in the world today is not heart disease or cancer…it’s depression. Depression is that common. We talk about severe depression and we talk about bipolar depression. When you see someone with either of these conditions, they may look rather similar from your vantage point, but they’re actually two distinctly different conditions.

    When we diagnose someone in this depressed state, it can be difficult to determine whether they suffer from major depression or bipolar depression, unless they have a history of mania or hypomania to determine the difference.

    Unipolar depression and bipolar depression don’t feel the same…but they do sort of look the same.

    Which is why a doctor asks whether you’ve had times when your mood was elevated, you felt energetic, hyperactive, maybe irritable, angry… and overly confident…all at the same time?

    For this reason, so many with bipolar disorder are first diagnosed with major depression, especially those with bipolar II disorder, since their symptoms include far more depression than hypomania.

    When you first see a psychiatrist about your depression, it’s important to be patient. Because some of your symptoms may not have emerged yet…and you may appear to have unipolar depression. Then later, mania or hypomania emerges, and your doctor may change your diagnosis to bipolar disorder, along with your prescriptions.

    Because of the challenge of diagnosing someone accurately who has a low mood, researchers have been seeking a means of using some sort of biological markers to determine scientifically the proper diagnosis and character of the depressive symptoms.

    This man is in pain but doesn't know if it's bipolar depression vs unipolar depression.

    Something that would differ in patients with unipolar depression from those with bipolar depression. Possibly brain activity. Or maybe proteins in the blood? Possibly genetics?

    Exploring Bipolar Depression vs Unipolar Depression

    An interesting study conducted by Brain and Behavior Foundation researchers, led by Mary Phillips, Ph.D., performed with a relatively small group of subjects, suggests a way your doctor might differentiate the two disorders clinically to aid in accurate diagnosis.

    Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), full brain scans were conducted on a group that included 18 bipolar patients who were in bipolar depression, 23 depressed patients who’d been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD), and another 23 who were healthy without a diagnosed disorder.

    It’s unfortunate that their study involved so few, and also that 90% of those with bipolar disorder were diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, leaving only 10% who had bipolar I disorder. A more evenly distributed group might have told us more.

    Even so, they did make some significant observations.

    The working memory system is used by the brain to maintain, manipulate, and update information that is associated with tasks that are presently at hand. When the networks of nerves in this system are damaged, learning – reasoning – and decision- making ability can be disabled.

    This is particularly true in those with mood disorders, like depression.

    So, the researchers gave each participant an easy task and a difficult one, while the participant was undergoing an fMRI brain scan. The design of the tests was to highlight that people form expectations about a task before they fulfill it.

    Bipolar depression vs unipolar depression can both be treated effectively with IV ketamine treatment.

    A person might feel the task will be easy, so there’s little stress in performing it. But if he expects the task to be difficult, his stress increases before he begins.

    It turned out, that there were patterns of neural (brain cell) activation in the medial and lateral areas of the prefrontal cortex, that were related to how easy or difficult a task would be.

    Mechanism Defends the Person with Bipolar Depression From Emotional Pain

    The researchers reported that people with bipolar disorder may actually block anticipation of a negative experience to avoid experiencing negative emotion while performing a task. That basically people with bipolar disorder seem to have a built in defensive mechanism to help protect them from negative emotions.

    So enlightening. People with unipolar depression don’t do this. They feel what they feel. But those with bipolar experience such damage from their negative emotions.

    As I said earlier, unipolar depression and bipolar depression may look similar to someone observing people suffering from these. But they feel different.

    Let’s add to that, that both of these disorders can often end in suicide, unfortunately. Even so, it’s more common in bipolar disorder.

    There are traditional medicines for people with these disorders. And those medicines do help a lot of people.

    But not all.

    For that reason it’s important to seek help until you find treatment that helps you feel better, function better, and live a rewarding life.

    IV Ketamine Doesn’t Differentiate Between Bipolar Depression vs Unipolar Depression – It’s an Extraordinary and Robust Depression Treatment

    At Innovative Psychiatry, we offer IV ketamine treatment to help you experience relief from severe depression that prescriptions haven’t helped…. And for bipolar depression that is unrelenting in spite of prescription medications.

    Bipolar depression vs unipolar depression for this woman is still crushing.

    IV ketamine treatment isn’t effective with mania or hypomania. But the mania or hypomania is easier to manage and treat without bipolar depression. This treatment can be exceptionally effective for both unipolar and bipolar depression. In fact, it can be utterly life-changing.

    And… in regard to the risks of suicidal thoughts, IV ketamine treatment can erase those thoughts in an afternoon. A few hours. And if you’re not plagued by thoughts of death and dying, you’re a great deal freer to work toward healing, restoration, and joy.

    In this current global crisis, suicides have been increasing, among those with disorders, healthcare workers, physicians, and more.

    IV ketamine can save lives by removing thoughts that lead to suicide.

    IV ketamine has given her joy instead of depression.

    If you suffer from bipolar depression or unipolar depression, and medications haven’t helped, call us.

    Let us help you find your joy again, and your hope. The current global crisis is temporary, but it has affected the outlook of millions. The good news is that joy can be restored, and hope can return. You can feel resilient, and equipped for what life has in store.

    We’re here for you, and we’re working within a safety protocol so you can be treated without fear.

    Better days are ahead.

    To the restoration of your best self,

    signature of Lori Calabrese, M.D.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D.

  • Ketamine Restoration in the Amygdala Repairs Social Connections

    Ketamine Restoration in the Amygdala Repairs Social Connections

    Nick walked in after school, slamming the door behind him.

    His mom looked up, startled by the noise. “What’s that dirty look about..?? You’re so judgmental!!” Nick was fuming, and with that he headed upstairs. His mom followed him upstairs and spoke softly, knowing her son was apparently volatile. She didn’t realize that what just happened could be repaired by ketamine restoration in the amygdala.

    “Nicholas, I’m sorry my face looked judgmental. I wasn’t feeling judgmental…I was startled by the noise the door made, and concerned that you seemed so upset. Did something happen..?”

    Nick crumbled. 

    He didn’t know why he misread his mom, or why he was so angry. Nick hated himself for being hateful. He just felt so angry so much of the time, and when he wasn’t angry, he just wanted to cry… what was wrong with him?

    “Sorry, mom.  I thought you were mad about me slamming the door. I have a lot of homework and I just don’t want to do it. It all seems pointless.”

    Nick’s mom knew he’d been under a cloud since the last school year. He was seeing a psychiatrist, which he always dreaded. The medications didn’t seem to be helping, in spite of the fact he was on his third different medicine.

    He’d all but refused to see the therapist any more. As his mom, she just wanted him to feel better and enjoy his adolescent life, but she was hitting a wall. All she knew to do was to encourage him to keep trying and to provide a little comfort where she could.

    “Why don’t you come downstairs, and I’ll make you a sandwich. Eating something might help your homework seem a little easier to face.”

    Ketamine Restoration in the Amygdala

    While Nick ate, he decided to mention to his mom what his buddy in History had told him.

    “Mom, you know Zach? He’s been down for a long time…even longer than me. He told me today that he’s getting IV ketamine treatment. He said he took pills for a year and they didn’t help, no matter what brand the doctor ordered. Anyway, his dad read about this treatment, and Zach says it’s already helping.”

    “Really Nicholas? Does his doctor give him the treatment?”

    “No, he said his dad is taking him to a different psychiatrist who does it. He says his own doctor is all for it. He’ll go for two or three weeks and he’ll be done. So far, he’s finished the first week.  I can tell he’s doing better. He smiles and laughs. It’s weird. But I also envy him…”

    “I tell you what, Nicholas. You go work on homework, and I’ll see what I can find out about this treatment. IV ketamine you say? We’re going to find help, honey.”

    Three months later, Nick walked in the door, smiling ear to ear.  

    “Hi Mom. Since it’s Friday, is it ok for me to go to a movie tonight with Zach and Tim?  Oh and by the way, Chelsea said she’ll go to prom with me.”

    Nick beamed.

    “Oh that’s fantastic, Nicholas! I’m so glad she said yes. She’ll be on the arm of the nicest and best looking guy at school!  And sure, the movie’s fine. Zach and Tim are great guys.”

    IV ketamine restoration in the amygdala can make all the difference.

    Depression Can Impair the Amygdala’s Ability to Process Faces

    To the casual observer, this may all sound a little too easy. And for some people, it might be. Everyone’s different. But for most people like Zach and Nicholas, their misery is reversed by a series of 6 IV ketamine infusions, sometimes a few more.

    And in some cases supplements are needed to address low blood levels of certain hormones or nutrients first. But, when you consider the comparison of that to years of traditional antidepressants that aren’t working, it’s an easy choice.

    On top of that, the prospect of joy – and hope – in place of the damaged relationships caused by a short temper, a hopeless outlook, and absent motivation, is again…an easy choice.

    Humans like to feel good. When you don’t, you’re not very pleasant to be around, you know? Is there anything that makes you feel worse than severe, unrelenting depression complicated by anxiety and phobias?  It’s misery.

    And the thing is, it colors the way you see everything. You can be looking in someone’s face who’s just preoccupied, and interpret their expression as angry, critical, irritable… then you snap at them about it, and they feel attacked from out of nowhere.

    Guess what?  There’s a scientific reason you do that. It’s not just your imagination. And the good news is that IV ketamine treatment actually changes something deep in your brain to help you interpret their facial expression for what it’s intended to be.

    To understand this, we need to talk about the a wonderful structure in the brain called the amygdala.

    Ketamine Restoration in the Amygdala

    The amygdala consists of 2 almond shaped structures deep in the sides of the brain at the temporal lobe. It’s one part of the limbic system which processes emotion, records emotional memories, influences behavior, motivation, and the sense of smell, as well. 

    One key job the amygdala performs is helping you to look at facial expressions in others and determine their emotion. For instance, if you see someone frowning, with their face tense and lips tight, do you assume they’re happy? Of course not. It’s your amygdala that sees their expression and determines they may be angry.

    Well, when someone is suffering from a disorder like severe depression or bipolar depression, their amygdala may be malfunctioning.

    Study Explores Ketamine’s Effect on Amygdala Function

    So recently, a team of researchers led by Joana R.A. Loureiro in Los Angeles and Chicago set out to study what effect two rapid acting depression treatments have on the amygdala’s ability to accurately process facial expressions. Using functional MRIs (fMRI) they tested 44 adults who were all experiencing an episode of severe depression.

    They divided the group into two parts: 17 subjects were given an individualized number of treatments of ECT and 27 were given IV ketamine infusions 2 or 3 times a week until they had received 4 infusions. 

    This was an interesting approach because both forms of treatment affect brain function and emotional processing, so they wanted to see if it worked at the level of the brain cells. 

    Since interpreting the facial expressions of others is such an important part of social functioning, they focused on the subjects’ ability to accurately do that. The subjects were tested by the task of matching emotional faces on a screen. If the face at the top of the screen was smiling, they needed to match the face at the bottom of the screen that was also smiling.

    They found that both modes of treatment improved the accuracy of the subjects’ amygdala function.

    When Depression Impairs – Ketamine Repairs

    Now, about the type of scenario that Nicholas and his mom experienced. At the moment he walked in the door he believed he saw criticism and judgment in her facial expression, when her look was actually surprise and concern.

    When someone is severely depressed, it’s as though they have an affinity for negative feelings and beliefs. So, when they see a facial expression that appears negative to them, it goes to the bone. They feel it so deeply and lightening fast.

    It’s easy to see that this type of misinterpretation and reaction only further damages relationships that are already fragile when someone is severely depressed.

    And even though both ECT and ketamine improved the amygdala’s function, ECT is a treatment that carries some bias and even stigma for its side effects and history.

    We also know that ketamine not only blocks the NMDA receptors but it also activates AMPA receptors and an array of other actions that can make you feel remarkably better.

    And there’s another life-changing benefit ketamine can provide:

    IV ketamine can stop suicidal thoughts in a few hours.

    This in-depth study shows yet another way that depression impairs your function, and how ketamine treatment can restore it better than ever.

    Reach Out for Ketamine Restoration in the Amygdala – And Get Your Joy Back

    At Innovative Psychiatry, want to help you feel a lot better than just “less depressed.” We want you to experience joy, a song in your heart, hope for the future, and energized motivation to build the life you want, with healthy and strong relationships.

    It’s almost like using a car jack to crank up your life and replace the pain and loss with new ideas, new projects, new joy in relationships.

    If you can relate to Nick, and you want to feel joyful and able to care about others as you put your best foot forward, call us.

    We want to work with you and your healthcare team to help you experience extraordinary relief. 

    Reach out now for hope.

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

  • Does Hopelessness Accompany Suicidal Thoughts or Cause Them?

    Does Hopelessness Accompany Suicidal Thoughts or Cause Them?

    Tim dragged himself into the school cafeteria where the photographers had set up equipment to take school pictures.

    He felt angry, bitter, sullen, and hopeless. What purpose could there be in school pictures? What’s the point? he thought. Tim hated being at school. He felt like he would self-destruct if he didn’t get out of there. Then it was his turn for his portrait. He stared at the camera. The photographer said, “Smile!” (Does hopelessness accompany suicidal thoughts…or cause them?)

    He just stared straight ahead. Enduring. He knew if he smiled it would make him look like a horror-movie character. Click. Flash. And it was over.

    Tim got up, and dragged himself out of the cafeteria and out the back door of the school.  He shuffled home. He couldn’t stand being there any longer. 

    Right behind Tim in the line a pretty girl waited her turn. Emily smiled for the camera. She didn’t want to. But she tried to do the right thing. Her sad eyes gave away her despair. Emily lived in a neighborhood where everyone knew each other, got together, barbecued, and enjoyed the community.

    The problem with that is that one of her neighbors offered to spend time helping her with her music lessons. Her parents encouraged her to take advantage of the expertise of this “nice man.” Luis was 41, college educated, and very musical.

    Emily didn’t know how to tell her parents that every time she went to his house, he had other ideas in mind. She felt ashamed. Troubled. Scared. Dirty.

    She tried to be responsible and do everything expected of her. Her parents just knew she was a good student, kind, and obedient. Does hopelessness accompany suicidal thoughts…or cause them?

    Once when Emily tried to tell her mom about Luis, her mom corrected her before she could get it out. She told her to be sure to be respectful toward him when she was at his house.

    Emily clammed up.

    But she was reaching the breaking point. After two years, she didn’t think she could take this any longer. She didn’t know how to stop it. She was feeling more and more hopeless that there would ever be an end to it. And Luis threatened that if she told anyone he would hurt her family.

    So Does Hopelessness Accompany Suicidal Thoughts or Cause Them?

    Both Tim and Emily were losing their strength to hang on. Of the two, Tim was the most likely to be identified by teachers as one who might need to see a psychiatrist. His facial expressions, attitude, and disposition made him a likely candidate for that kind of help.

    Emily, on the other hand, seemed quiet, compliant, and responsible to the school staff. Her teachers guessed she must come from a very nice family.  Emily’s depression wasn’t easy to notice because she didn’t let it show. Her goal was to please those in authority in her life.

    Tim’s doctor, on the other hand, diagnosed him with bipolar II disorder. He prescribed medication, but Tim did not feel much better.

    Tim directed his anger at his dad. Because he felt his dad lacked understanding for his condition. He resented his dad expecting him to function when he felt so bad. He wished he could crawl into a hole and hide from the world.

    Emily felt completely alone in the world because she couldn’t talk to anyone about what she was going through. And though her parents were good people, they had no idea she continuously faced such a horror.

    We can look at Tim and Emily and draw our own conclusions. But you have to ask yourself does hopelessness accompany suicidal thoughts…or does it cause them?

    Tim’s problem wasn’t his dad so much as the symptoms of his illness that weren’t relieved by his medicine. And Tim didn’t know how to approach his dad in a way to help him see what he was going through. His dad just felt he needed to discipline his belligerent son.

    In Emily’s case, it seemed that her problems could be resolved by simply blowing the whistle on Luis. That message is plastered on the walls of the school… “Tell someone!”

    She’d heard that message all her life.  She could go to the school nurse, or a teacher she trusted, or even a police officer. But she didn’t.  When she would think about it, all she could think of was how hurt her parents would be that she talked to a stranger instead of keeping their business in the family. 

    She was also afraid her dad might do something crazy to Luis that would get him arrested, then  what would her mom and brothers do?

    Every time she thought about talking to someone she hit a wall of all the reasons why she couldn’t…

    Then, in a two week period, two students in the high school took their own lives.

    Everyone wondered why. 

    No one dreamed Emily was sad or had any reason to do such a thing. Except her heartbroken parents… because Emily left a note. And Luis was arrested.

    Tim’s dad was devastated. He’d been doing his best to help Tim get the treatment he needed, but each new medication required several weeks –sometimes months — to see if it helped him feel better. Talk therapy takes time, everyone said. And he hadn’t heard of a treatment like IV ketamine. He just assumed Tim’s doctor would do what was best for his son.

    It was so hard to know the difference between his son’s bipolar symptoms and just a bad rebellious attitude. He worried about it all the time. Just not knowing how to respond to Tim’s responses.  He wished he had a guide book. But now it was too late. He just didn’t realize how severe it was.

    These two deaths stunned and rocked the school they both attended. Two very different students who didn’t know each other, but who both could have been helped…if only…

    Does hopelessness accompany suicidal thoughts…or does it cause them?

    If you knew Tim or Emily, you’d likely have been grief stricken by their deaths. Probably baffled.  And for good reason. Because hopelessness and despair come in different forms. And you probably wish you could have helped them.

    Tim’s hopelessness was within him, as a symptom of a severe and difficult-to-treat illness.

    Tim probably spent most of his time in the throes of bipolar depression. When your mind and outlook are so dark so much of the time, you can desperately need a break from it. 

    But if you know of no medicine that will supply that break for you…  if your doctor knows of no medicine that will help without trying one after another… you get your hopes up over and over…only to experience a new type of grim despair. Hopelessness grows after years of this…and it may dawn on you there’s nothing that can help.

    And you don’t know where to look for hope.

    Emily’s hopelessness was internal, too. She felt trapped by an external force. If that external force could have been removed from her life, she probably could have recovered. Unless conditions like PTSD or severe depression complicated her condition. But even those conditions can be relieved with a novel and advanced treatment like IV ketamine.

    Children and teens should be able to live healthy, active, trusting lives in a perfect world. But it’s not a perfect world.

    When they’re assaulted, and wounded, they may need special care with a skilled therapist, support from friends and family, and treatment to help them heal. Sometimes that can be treatment with a novel, advanced treatment like IV ketamine.

    A group of researchers led by Ilya Baryshnikov, M.D., asked whether the hopelessness people with depressive disorders experience is a crucial predictor of suicidal thoughts and plans.

    They guessed that hopelessness was the sign that a person would be having suicidal thoughts, so they conducted an in-depth study which was just published this month in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.   

    They followed 406 people for 10 years, and used diagnostic tools to determine what role hopelessness played, as well as what role the severity of the depression played, in each person’s experience with suicidal thoughts.

    Standard tools like Scale for Suicidal Ideation, Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Hopelessness Scale, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Perceived Social Support Scale – Revised, and Eysenck Personality Inventory helped them evaluate the state of mind as well as personality traits of their subjects. 

    They found that hopelessness served to explain the suicidal thoughts, but wasn’t so much a crucial prerequisite… and that it’s actually the severity of the depression that leads to suicidal thoughts.

    In the cases of Tim and Emily, both needed intervention. For Tim, IV ketamine could have possibly changed his whole world. By helping him to achieve remission, and restoring his energy and hope, his world — and his relationship with his dad — could have been transformed. 

    It’s likely his dad, like so many, had no idea that IV ketamine was an option. Much less understanding about what it could do for his son.

    For Emily, it is possible the long term stress of abuse wore down her resilience, undermining her resolve to protect herself and report Luis. To trust her parents and make them listen, so they could help.

    In her case, too, IV ketamine could have helped restore her emotional strength to do what was needed to make herself and other girls in her neighborhood safe …to speak up.

    At Innovative Psychiatry, we see teens like Tim and Emily — and find the transformative effects of IV ketamine treatment can bring restoration not only to their outlook, but to many aspects of their lives. Relationships grow stronger, energy for school improves their performance, and their hope and joy billow. Not for everyone, certainly, but for most,

    If you, or your teen, have been depressed from major depressive disorder or from bipolar depression, and oral antidepressants aren’t working, call us. Let’s talk about whether you’re a candidate for IV ketamine treatment.

    If you’ve suffered from a major trauma that other treatments haven’t helped, call us. IV ketamine treatment can restore you if PTSD has impaired your function in life.

    IV ketamine can be dramatically effective also with severe social anxiety, alcohol abuse disorder, substance abuse disorder, and can stop suicidal thinking in an afternoon.

    We want you, and your teen, to be restored to the best you ever, and have a rewarding a fulfilling life with your own joy… and hope… abounding. 

    Lori Calabrese, M.D. is on the front end of the race to stop PTSD in its tracks using IV ketamine treatment.

    To the restoration of your best self,

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