The Most Beloved City in the Region is a Short Drive to Relief with Ketamine Treatment by Lori Calabrese, M.D.
One of the most engaging, affluent, and interestingly varied communities in Connecticut is West Hartford. A suburb of Hartford, this community works, plays, and lives in an atmosphere that boasts top awarded schools, excellent public safety, and delightful restaurants, shopping, and cultural opportunities.
Known for the trendy downtown area called West Hartford Center … or just “the center” by locals … this area has been the hub of community activity since the 17th century.
Blue Back Square opened in 2008 as an addition to the central area and contains a movie theatre, a bookstore, medical offices, and great restaurants … making a trip to the doctor an all day entertainment event.
West Hartford is home to two universities — University of Hartford and the University of St. Joseph — and showed a population of over 63,000 in the 2010 census.This community was just a parish of Hartford in 1672, not incorporated as a town until 1854, yet rose to rank #9 on Kiplingers’ 10 Best Cities for the Next Decade in 2010.
Rich in history, West Hartford proudly displays the Mark Twain homestead, where Samuel Clemens and his family lived. In this delightful home, Mark Twain created Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Imagine him stretched out on his lovely covered porch as he created their adventures in his musings.
Those Who Suffer Depression in West Hartford
Ah, but those were simpler times. And with all the activity, enrichment, and stimulation available in West Hartford, there are members of this great community who are unable to fully partake of the opportunities it offers. In fact, there are some who just don’t get out much.
Adults — and adolescents — who suffer from depression, social anxiety, bipolar disorder, panic attacks, PTSD, and OCD, not to mention suicidal thoughts, are often too symptomatic to be able to enjoy everything that their families, their friends, and West Hartford have to offer.
Their symptoms can be so severe, and so overwhelming, that simple pleasures like shopping or a movie are just too difficult. And the sad reason is that their treatment just isn’t working.
Outdated Depression Medications
Here’s the truth. Researchers developed those antidepressant medications on a certain hypothesis — one that’s now outmoded. The going theory at the end of the 20th century was that depression was caused by low levels of certain neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. But as the 21st century progressed, researchers found that those neurotransmitters play a lesser role that’s a side step from the real causes of depression.
For this reason, at least 1/3 of people who suffer from psychiatric disorders are not helped by traditional medications.
For them, something had to change.
But things have changed. Because another medicine has stolen the show for treating depression, bipolar depression, social anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and suicidal thinking. Ketamine treatment near West Hartford CT is changing history for people with these disorders.
Extraordinary Breakthrough Medicine for Depression – Ketamine
In the 1960’s, researchers developed this medicine to work as an anesthesia medicine. Ketamine has proven to be so safe, so effective, that it’s listed on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines for anesthesia and treatment of pain.
Like most effective pain medications, people abused ketamine, and on the streets called it Special K. However, its abuse by irresponsible individuals seeking an “experience” does not invalidate its gold-standard value in treating people in disaster situations, or in sedation during surgery.
Since the early 21st century began, researchers have been studying ketamine’s remarkable antidepressant benefits. As studying led to trials of different protocols to determine the best ways to get the most benefit from this medicine, more and more doctors have begun offering ketamine to people with psychiatric disorders.
Problems with Administration of This Game-Changing Treatment
In the process, a couple problems have arisen. One problem has been the use of somewhat cavalier routes of administration that deliver questionable amounts of the medicine to the brain at uncontrolled rates.
Time Magazine highlighted this in an article in 2017. The article told the story about practices of giving nasal or IM injections to patients, then letting them just endure the sometimes frightening “high” that resulted.
Those in the forefront of research and practice with ketamine study this medicine’s antidepressant effects and label this practice sloppy medicine.
With the use of IV infusion pumps and an experienced psychiatrist, you’re not left wondering what your dose really was. Or if it was enough. Plus whether it got to where it was supposed to be going. And if you’re going to get wildly careening rates of absorption and the frightening experiences that can come with that.
Non-Psychiatrists Lack Training for Psychiatric Responses or Psychiatric Emergencies
Anesthesiologists, emergency room physicians, and even nurse anesthetists now administer ketamine treatment for psychiatric disorders. That’s the other problem.
You might say that this was a somewhat natural gravitation by anesthesiologists. Since they’ve been safely using ketamine in surgery for nearly 50 years, it seems obvious to them. They may feel this is “their” medicine so they’re the best ones to administer it.
And in terms of pain and anesthesia, they definitely are. No one is more experienced in using ketamine to put patients to sleep, and to monitor them while they’re out.
But, since psychiatrists administer ketamine to treat psychiatric disorders when patients are awake this is a different situation.
State-of-the-Art IV Ketamine Treatment Near West Hartford CT
Ketamine’s use for psychiatric disorders is a psychiatric treatment. The delicate chemistry and structures of the brain can cause a variety of responses in patients with these disorders.
In cases where patients have severe crippling depression, terrifying anxiety, severe and embattling bipolar disorder, psychotic symptoms, gripping PTSD, OCD, and compelling suicidal impulses, there is need for a psychiatrist’s care.
Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, ER docs and others offering ketamine treatment are just not educated or trained to treat complex treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders or the reactions patients may experience because they’re so ill.
When it comes to psychiatrists, this is all we do — all day long and on nights and weekends.
We’re strong advocates for physician experts ministering to our most fragile patients — not physician technicians.
Neuroscientists and many psychiatrists still consider ketamine somewhat experimental. And it’s not easy for a psychiatrist to manage every contingency that can arise with extremely ill patients.
Expert IV Ketamine Treatment Near West Hartford CT
But there is someone in Connecticut who has been on the forefront of ketamine treatment nationally. She has the experience and training to provide administration of IV ketamine with the expertise necessary. Using a state-of-the-art infusion pump, she controls the dosage and rate precisely to ensure best results. She focuses on controlling the medicine, rather than letting it control the patient.
Lori Calabrese, M.D. is Hopkins- and Harvard-educated and Massachusetts General-trained, and served on the clinical faculty at both Harvard and Yale. With decades of experience, she’s the doctor that doctors go to when they need a psychiatrist.
Her practice is a full-service practice offering psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, and IV ketamine treatment. She developed deep expertise with selecting, titrating, and combining medicines.
She also works to help improve your gut microbiome so that you can best respond to your treatment. And, of course, she adjusts ketamine dosages and rates to get the best possible outcome for each person.
Your brain is too delicate, too complex, to let just anyone treat it.
Innovative Psychiatry Provides Ketamine Treatment
Dr. Calabrese at Innovative Psychiatry in nearby South Windsor, CT provides IV ketamine treatment. She says it’s the most exciting treatment in psychiatry that she’s seen in her decades of practice. Illnesses like major depressive disorder, bipolar depression, social anxiety, PTSD, OCD — and the suicidal thinking that often accompanies long-standing suffering — are all succumbing to ketamine’s power.
For many years she developed her practice around the idea of treating the most severely ill patients. She works carefully and painstakingly to achieve relief for those patients with the most severe symptoms. And those who have been failed by traditional medications and other treatments.
When IV ketamine treatment emerged, she was on its cutting edge and developed the first ketamine clinic in Connecticut. She has a depth and breadth of outpatient experience with ketamine infusions that is unparalleled.
She has also successfully used ketamine treatment to stop suicidal thinking quickly in patients with depression and anxiety who want to avoid going to the ER or being hospitalized. Dr. Calabrese presented the results of her work describing the largest outpatient real-world clinical use of ketamine infusions for suicidal thinking at the Ketamine and Related Psychiatric Compounds International Conference in Oxford, England in 2018.
For those who need ketamine treatment near West Hartford CT – Innovative Psychiatry is a short drive. Hope is near.
At Innovative Psychiatry, up to 80% of the patients we see with treatment-resistant depression experience remarkable outcomes. This is strikingly better than university protocols and practices using low, fixed doses.
When we individualize your dose at each treatment, and work with you and your psychiatrist and therapist, you have the best possible chance to get better — within hours, days, or a couple of weeks.
Better and better until you feel like yourself again. Ketamine restores initiative, motivation, energy, enjoyment in life, and well-being to build and restore relationships.
If you’d like to schedule a consult to see if IV ketamine treatment could be helpful for your psychiatric symptoms or suicidal thoughts, please call us at 860.648.9755 or send us a quick email.