DENT Neurologic Institute is one facility in Western New York that provides this therapy. Within DENT’s Interventional Psychiatry, there’s hope when it comes to battling mental health. Posted
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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. elizabeth "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. ketamine "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 […]
Understanding ketamine therapy after Matthew Perry’s cause of death was revealed
