Sarah Gutilla was seriously considering suicide in late 2022 due to her acute and unresponsive sadness. The 34-year-old, who was raised in foster care, has potentially fatal mental scars as a result of physical and sexual abuse during her early years.
Using the generic anesthetic for off-label purposes including treating depression, Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles offers intravenous ketamine therapy. Her husband, in a desperate attempt to save money, pulled together $600 for the first of six rounds of treatment. It was Gutilla’s first time leaving her home in Llano, California, for the first time in two years when she hopped into an Uber for the 75-mile trek to Los Angeles. She said that the outcomes were immediate.
“After the first treatment, I felt a level of relief that I believe is typical,” the patient stated. “I’ve never felt so comfortable and at ease.”
Over the past several years, there has been an increase in the number of for-profit ketamine clinics that provide infusions for a variety of mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. A decade ago, the off-label use of ketamine hydrochloride, a Schedule III substance licensed by the FDA as an anesthetic in 1970, was radical; nonetheless, ketamine clinics have sprung up all over the country, numbering between 500 and 750.
Grand View Research, a market research firm, estimates that industry revenues will reach $3.1 billion in 2022 and would more than double to $6.9 billion by 2030.
Ketamine for mental health is usually not covered by insurance, therefore patients have to pay for it out of pocket.
Although ketamine prescriptions are lawful, the FDA has not authorized the drug for use in treating mental health conditions, thus individual clinicians are required to create their own treatment plans. Because the medicine is psychedelic at the proper doses, there is a great deal of variation within providers; some prefer gentle, low-dosage treatments, while others support higher doses that may cause hallucinations.
Dustin Robinson, the managing principal of Iter Investments, a venture capital business that specializes in the treatment of hallucinogenic drugs, described ketamine as the wild west.
Ketamine users emphasize that there is a critical need behind the drug’s rise to prominence as a mental health treatment. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that depression is the primary cause of disability among Americans aged 15 to 44. Additionally, around 25% of adults have a diagnosable mental illness at any given time.
Even though rules demand parity, many insurance plans pay less for mental health services than for physical health care. According to Steven Siegel, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, many patients with illnesses so receive little or no care early on and are desperate by the time they reach a ketamine facility.
However, the discovery that billionaire Elon Musk openly used ketamine, and the fact that “Friends” star Matthew Perry also died from a ketamine overdose, have raised new questions about ketamine and the regulatory framework—or lack thereof—that surrounds it.
Same-day appointments are frequently available at commercial ketamine clinics, where patients can pay cash for a medication that produces instant effects. In addition to receiving ketamine intravenously, patients are frequently given blankets, headphones, and eye masks to intensify the dissociative experience of not being in their own bodies. Clinics often charge $600-$1,000 each treatment for a standard dose of ketamine, which is 10 times lower than the dosage used for anesthesia.
Even now, ketamine’s image as the party drug “Special K” lingers; Siegel’s first National Institutes of Health funding was intended to investigate ketamine as an abuse substance. Users could fall into a “K hole,” or negative experience.
Reference Article- Ketamine therapy for mental health a ‘Wild West’ for doctors and patients