If you’re battling depression and aren’t finding relief with traditional medications or talk therapy, you may be a candidate for breakthrough ketamine treatments.
At New Tampa Interventional Pain & Sports Medicine, Jose De La Torre, MD, understands how depression symptoms can keep you from living life to the fullest. Dr. De La Torre offers comprehensive treatments using ketamine therapy to help you finally find relief when other treatments have failed you.
Depression involves more than just feeling sad. When you have clinical depression, you can feel weighed down by overwhelming feelings of sadness that affect every aspect of your life. You’re also likely to experience a change in behavior and a loss of interest in your hobbies, friends, and activities that always brought you joy in the past.
Without treatment, your issues can intensify, and ultimately you may feel that life is no longer worth living, especially when you combine depressive symptoms with underlying chronic pain. Thoughts of suicide or self-harming behaviors can put your life in jeopardy.
If you’ve already sought out treatment for your depression, but they aren’t working for you, it may be time to consider your other options. Ketamine therapy is an effective alternative to traditional depression medications and behavior therapies.
Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that’s often used to treat chronic nerve-related pain. It can also be effective in treating symptoms of depression and other mental health disorders, like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Though the reasoning behind how ketamine works for depression isn’t clearly understood, it’s believed that the drug increases a neurotransmitter known as glutamate that works with an AMPA receptor to block communication pathways that influence moods and thoughts.
Additionally, if you’ve developed depression because of a chronically painful condition, ketamine can quickly ease inflammation and pain to improve your overall quality of life. This in itself can help you find relief of your depressive symptoms associated with illness.
Dr. De La Torre delivers amounts of ketamine through an intravenous drip system that he carefully controls to meet your needs and ensure your safety. The dosages of ketamine for treating depression are much lower than when used as an anesthesia.
Prior to recommending ketamine for treatment of depression, Dr. De La Torre takes time to discuss the severity of your symptoms and your expectations for treatment. He also reviews your medical history to ensure the treatment is right for you.
Ketamine does have addictive properties, and Dr. De La Torre will also assess the safety of this type of therapy if you have dependency issues with drugs or alcohol.
Typically, the full benefit of ketamine therapy for depression is seen within one to three infusions. If you don’t respond to treatment within this timeframe, you may need to consider other treatment options.
If you find ketamine is working to ease your depressive symptoms, Dr. De La Torre works closely with you on a treatment plan moving forward that focuses on additional infusions to manage your symptoms.
If you’re looking for solutions to ease symptoms of depression not treatable with other therapies, schedule a consultation at New Tampa Interventional Pain & Sports Medicine to discuss the benefits of ketamine infusion therapy. You can book an appointment online or by phone today.
