Ketamine and Depression
This is an uncomfortable post for me today. Ketamine is a “party drug” which began life as an aesthetic. I read today that the NHS is looking at the possibility of using ketamine as a treatment for depression. I am a strong believer in the NHS, but I have serious reservations as to how medication is looked at as the cure all for mental health issues. It cannot be argued that there are some types of mental distress even depression which require chemical intervention. But there is a real sense that there is a lack of imagination in the health service. There is an army of talking therapists who can assist in this matter. Why is it that the go to place is big pharma?
Pharmaceutical intervention is not a cure all and indeed there are some intervention which are far more expensive than talking therapy interventions. The treatment of depression should embrace novel ways of approaching it, rather than simply drugging a person up in the hopes that this will will be enough to carry them over, without ever doing any real work to determine the cause and thereby the way forward for the long term. I wish the NGH would embrace the utilisation of the talking therapies rather than simply being interested in the latest drugs intervention.
