AMHERST, N.Y. (WKBW) — Earlier this month five people were charged in the death of actor Matthew Perry. An autopsy revealed he died from the acute effects of ketamine, he had been receiving regular infusion treatments for depression.
Ketamine has seen a huge surge in use in recent years as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain but it can be addictive, which is why it needs to be administered in very specific ways.
DENT Neurologic Institute is one facility in Western New York that provides ketamine therapy. I went to DENT on Tuesday to speak to a doctor and a woman who relies on the therapy to learn more.
Elizabeth shared that she's been battling depression her entire life.
"It possible to get out of a deep depression," she said. "I tried so many different options and nothing had really worked."
That's until she tried ketamine infusions at DENT.
"It's like turning on a light it really is," she said. "There was a point because of insurance I had to skip about four weeks or so and that put me back into a deep depression, so it's literally life-changing."
I spoke with Mike Asbach, a psych-PA and Associate Director of DENT Interventional Psychiatry.
What is ketamine?
Asbach: Old school anesthesia medication from the 1970s. It's considered a dissociative anesthetic. So the cool thing about it is when it's used for anesthesia, which is, of course, much higher dosing than what we use for depression, it will essentially cause the patient to disconnect from their body where they don't feel pain, they don't feel anything negative, but they're still awake. It doesn't put them to sleep. So that can be very helpful in an anesthetic setting, where maybe we need to set someone's fractured arm without anesthesia, then you can use ketamine to do that in a rather effective manner.
What are the risks and benefits associated with ketamine treatment?
Asbach: Ketamine, when it was developed as an anesthesia medication, was developed because they were looking for an anesthesia med that would not cause your blood pressure to drop and would not suppress your breathing. And it's a great anesthesia med from that perspective, I was in the army for a while, and we use ketamine quite frequently for those exact reasons, but it also has abuse potential that can be used in this party scene, recreationally, and a lot of times people use it as a club drug because it causes you to have dissociation, where you can feel a little bit spacey, have alterations in sound or sight. So when we use it for depression, we're typically doing it at a very low dose, you may still get a little bit loopy, you may get a little bit drowsy, but it's not going to get you high, per se. So there are risks associated with it when it's used in the improper setting. If someone is just going out on the street or on the internet and buying ketamine, it can have potential risks.
What does the treatment look like?
Asbach: Before we even treat someone, they'll come in and they'll meet with one of our providers. That's usually about a 45-minute conversation, and we go through things just to make sure that they're a good candidate. We want to make sure that they've tried many other options. We want to make sure they're treatment-resistant, but also that they're a suitable candidate. Medically, if they've had a history of strokes or heart attacks, then they may not be healthy enough to undergo ketamine therapy during this time, we also talked to them about risks and benefits, because certainly this is a treatment that can be quite safe when done correctly, but as we've seen with recent news, when done incorrectly, it can have some potential risks and concerns and certainly abuse potential. So we talked through all of that with the patient. If everything is a green light will have the patient then come in later that week to receive their first infusion. The infusion takes about 45 minutes. Usually the patient is a little bit groggy or tired, needs a ride home, but otherwise, the next day feels completely fine.
Anything else?
Asbach: We finally, after 50 years, are having real significant innovation and breakthrough in how we can treat these patients, and yet, at the same time, there's also concerns, there's risks that come with these things, and with the Matthew Perry situation, it's brought a lot of that to the forefront. I think people that are interested in these types of therapies, it really is important that you speak with your medical team, and you do it in a supervised medical setting. I think so often people think that they can just order it online or get it from a friend in that that'll have the same effect, but it really is important to speak with your medical team to make sure that it's done correctly and safely.
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