Ketamine Treatments for Mental Illness: What to Expect

When you aren’t finding adequate relief from symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other mental illnesses with medications, it’s important that you don’t lose hope.

At Klarity Clinic, our team of experienced physicians offer a new solution for treatment-resistant mental health issues. They provide on-site ketamine infusion therapies that can quickly reduce your symptoms and help you manage your condition in the long-term.

How ketamine can improve your mental health

Ketamine is an anesthetic medication that’s traditionally used in operating and emergency rooms. However, low-dose infusions of ketamine are also highly effective at reducing the severity of mental illnesses.

When used for treating mental health conditions, ketamine works by increasing the levels of glutamate in your brain. Glutamate is an important neurotransmitter needed for healthy brain function. Ketamine also helps to create new neural pathways in your brain (a concept called, ‘neuroplasticity’) to treat:

By increasing glutamate levels and improving communication connections in your brain, ketamine can quickly relieve your anxiety, depression, and cravings for alcohol and drugs.

What to expect during ketamine treatments

To help you receive full benefit of your ketamine treatments, our providers at Klarity Clinic deliver low doses of ketamine directly into your bloodstream using an intravenous (IV) line.  We carefully monitor your vital signs throughout treatment and put your safety as our top priority.

Infusions typically last forty to eighty minutes, for mental health treatment and several hours for chronic pain as well as drug and alcohol addiction treatment. You will relax to spa type music or nature videos.  People report feeling tingling or floating sensations throughout their body during the infusion and sometimes like you’re detached from your body during your treatment.  About 20% of patients report nausea but our clinics have multiple classes of anti-nausea medications available to keep it controlled.

If you feel uncomfortable during your infusion therapy, our team can slow the drip rate to help you better tolerate your treatment.

You can expect to spend some time in recovery until you feel alert before you can go home to rest. You’ll need someone to drive you home after your infusion, and you shouldn’t engage in strenuous activities for the rest of the day.

The lasting effects of ketamine infusion therapy

Many people enjoy relief during their infusion therapy and can experience a significant reduction in their symptom severity even after their first session. Symptomatic relief continues to improve in the days and weeks during your treatment.

Our team at Klarity Clinic can determine how many infusion sessions you need to achieve maximum benefit of ketamine. In general, six infusions over the course of two weeks are ideal for addressing treatment-resistant mental illnesses.

After your course of treatments are complete, our providers continue to monitor your progress with managing depression, anxiety, and other symptoms during follow-up.

To find out if ketamine infusion therapy is an option for you, call the Klarity Clinic office nearest you, or book an appointment online today.

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