What is PTSD?

PTSD is a psychiatric condition that can develop following any traumatic experience. PTSD causes disruptive symptoms, including:

·       Intense and disturbing thoughts and memories of the trauma

·       Flashbacks

·       Nightmares

·       Extreme sadness, anger, or fear

·       Detachment from other people

·       Avoidance behaviors

·       Strong reactions to unexpected noises

PTSD is highly personal. Everyone experiences and responds to trauma differently. If you have PTSD, you may experience any of these symptoms, or others, to varying degrees of severity.

What causes PTSD?

The precise causes of PTSD are not clear. However, when you experience a traumatic event, it can trigger changes in how your brain regulates chemicals and hormones in response to stress.  Your risk of PTSD is higher if you have a personal or family history of depression or anxiety. Other risk factors include experiencing trauma at any point during your life, substance abuse disorders, and lacking a strong social and emotional support system.

How is PTSD treated?

Ketamine infusion therapy provides rapid relief from depression and anxiety symptoms, offering the mental and emotional clarity needed for effective talk therapies. Ketamine therapy is an exceptional addition to other therapies for PTSD, including processing therapies, desensitization therapies, and other psychotherapies.

What happens during ketamine therapy for PTSD?

You have an extensive consultation to determine if ketamine infusion therapy is right for you. The team at Vancouver Ketamine Infusions often recommends beginning your treatment with a series of six infusion sessions. You will undergo a 40-minute long infusion three times a week. Each session includes a 40-minute infusion and 20-30 minutes of recovery. Like many other patients, you may experience a relaxed or floating sensation and other mild side effects during your treatment that subside quickly when your infusion is complete. 

Depending on the severity of your symptoms and your response to ketamine infusion therapy, we may suggest regular follow-up infusion sessions. You are carefully monitored throughout your sessions to ensure all protocols and best practice standards are followed to ensure your safety.

If you want to learn more about ketamine infusion therapy and how it can complement and support your other PTSD therapies, call 360-360-2244 to make an appointment.

 Can it relieve Depression, PTSD, Suicidal thoughts, bipolar, or OCD?

About 70% of patients with treatment-resistant depression (including bipolar patients, experience rapid relief after a low-dose ketamine infusion. Similar success rates have been seen in returning combat veterans suffering from PTSD. These patients’ cases are the worst of the worst, lasting years or even decades, and have not responded to any other treatments. Many have hovered on the verge of suicide for years, many have attempted suicide, and all have endured a poor quality of life. Before ketamine therapy, there was virtually no way to improve the condition of patients like these substantially. The fact that ketamine works rapidly on 70% of them is astonishing, and its discovery has profoundly changed depression research and our understanding of the very nature of depression. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the degree of relief can vary among patients. Some sufferers get only partial relief, some do not get relief until a second or third infusion, and some do not respond to ketamine at all. And some patients have additional medical conditions in addition to depression that can reduce its effectiveness.