Post: What to Know About Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

Key points

Evidence suggests that ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) can extend the benefits of ketamine treatment.

In limited research findings, KAP appears helpful for treating PTSD, depression, and pain conditions.

For ketamine and other psychedelic treatments, a trance-like state seems necessary for optimal results.

Evidence suggests that for psychedelic treatments to achieve maximum efficacy, a trance-like dissociative state is necessary Source: Keralt / Pixabay

Part 1 of this series provided an overview of essential information about ketamine for psychiatric use; this post will focus on ketamine-assisted psychotherapy .

Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) can encompass many different things. Treatment settings can range from exotic, remote locations (as per a ketamine retreat) to the more mundane, like a ketamine clinic or psychiatrist’s office. Similarly, psychotherapy in this modality can be a single session with a therapist you’ve just met or it can involve a series of sessions with your regular therapist.Given that research into KAP is at a very early stage, there are few review articles on its efficacy, and those that exist examine just a handful of studies, with most having small sample sizes, so the findings need to be taken with a grain of salt. However, in one such review by Drozdz and colleagues (2022), the authors reported that, in general, KAP can “prolong clinically significant reductions in pain, anxiety and depressive symptoms” and that “longer-term psychotherapy may be helpful in sustaining these gains.”Dore and colleagues (2019) explored the efficacy of KAP within a psychoanalytic framework in the first such study […]

What to Know About Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy