Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition that can be incredibly difficult to overcome on your own. Though conventional treatment options for PTSD are effective, they’re often uncomfortable and take months of effort to show results. And many who attempt these treatments may not see the improvements they hoped for.
Ketamine treatment for PTSD represents an exciting and effective new treatment option, even if you haven’t found success with more traditional methods. While ketamine treatment for PTSD is still relatively new, it has quickly shown to be highly effective and produce rapid results for clients facing this difficult mental health concern.
Rates of PTSD in the United States
PTSD is more common than you might believe. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, one of the leading forces behind PTSD research, roughly 5% of adults in the United States have a diagnosis of PTSD in any given year.
Certain groups are at higher risk of PTSD than others. Women, for instance, tend to have greater rates of PTSD than men. Similarly, veterans are afflicted with PTSD more frequently than civilians, and combat veterans experience an even greater risk than those who were never deployed into combat.
Causes of PTSD
There are countless potential causes of PTSD. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the initial trigger for a person experiencing PTSD is exposure to death, threatened death, serious injury or the threat of serious injury, and actual or threatened sexual violence.
PTSD can arise from these events in many ways. You can develop the condition when the triggering experience happens to you directly, when you witness or are indirectly exposed to it, or even when you simply learn that it’s happened to someone close to you.
Importantly, the specifics of the events are less important than how people react to them. If you and your friend are both in a car accident, for instance, you may leave the experience feeling traumatized while your friend experiences no such symptoms.
Ultimately, the development of PTSD is unique to each individual, and countless other factors may influence how you react to a potentially traumatic situation. This could include:
- Overall stress levels
- The coping mechanisms available to you at the time of the event
- Social support
- Availability of mental health services
All these can make a difference in whether you develop PTSD after a dramatic life event unfolds.
Signs and Symptoms of PTSD
Recognizing the symptoms of PTSD is critical for identifying when you should seek professional treatment services. Many people are unaware of what PTSD looks like, how it feels, and whether treatment can support them in feeling better.
The symptoms of PTSD are typically broken down into four main categories: intrusion symptoms, avoidance symptoms, changes in mood and cognition, and alterations in arousal and reactivity.
Intrusion Symptoms
PTSD can cause sufferers to feel sudden and invasive symptoms that lead to people reexperiencing a traumatic event. The specific intrusive symptoms you might experience include:
- Flashbacks
- Nightmares
- Recurrent distressing memories
These experiences can feel like they are outside of your control and can be intensely distressing.
Avoidance Symptoms
Avoidance symptoms refer to people’s desire to specifically take actions that avoid reminders of the traumatic event, such as by doing the following:
- Avoiding people associated with the event
- Refusing to talk about the event
- Avoiding certain areas that trigger distressing memories
These symptoms can often be debilitating. They have the potential to lead to people cutting off important parts of their lives in order to distance themselves from their distressing memories.
Changes in Mood and Cognition
PTSD often results in sudden and significant changes in your overall mood and your ability to think clearly. For example, people with PTSD can struggle with symptoms such as:
- Difficulty experiencing positive emotions
- Loss of interest in hobbies or activities
- Self-blame, even when the event was outside of their control
- Lapses in memory surrounding the traumatic event
- Depressed mood
These symptoms are typically markedly different from how people felt before the traumatic event and can cause substantial impairment in everyday life.
Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity
The last set of symptoms refers to an increased state of arousal and heightened reactivity. This often results in people experiencing symptoms like these:
- Hypervigilance, or always being on the lookout for danger
- Being easily startled or jumpy
- Anger and irritability
- Trouble concentrating
- Sleep disruptions
Essentially, living with PTSD can place people in a constant state of “fight-or-flight.” This is further indicated by elevated activity in the parasympathetic nervous system in people with PTSD when compared to neurotypical controls.
How Ketamine Treatment for PTSD Can Help
The symptoms of PTSD themselves often interfere with the standard methods of PTSD treatment. For example, the most common form of therapy for PTSD, prolonged exposure therapy, asks clients to speak with a therapist for an extended period about their traumatic experiences.
This style of therapy goes to great lengths to ensure that clients are never pushed too far or retraumatized. Nonetheless, avoidance symptoms can make it difficult for people to engage with exposure methods altogether.
Ketamine treatment for PTSD takes a different approach. As such, it can make the process of working through your challenges with a therapist much easier. Ketamine belongs to a class of drugs known as dissociative psychedelics. Essentially, this means that taking the medication can help people:
- Take a step outside of themselves
- Look at things in different ways
- Disconnect from the troubling symptoms they experience
In PTSD treatment, this can be remarkably powerful for helping people along the path to recovery. Being able to step away from your symptoms and focus your entire energy on the work of recovery can quickly spark meaningful breakthroughs and lasting change.
Understanding Ketamine as a Mental Health Medication
Ketamine has a long history of use in the medical field, though it has only recently begun being used as a treatment for mental health conditions. Historically, ketamine has been used at much higher dosages as an anesthetic.
The interest in ketamine being employed for mental health treatment started when surgeons noticed that depressed patients undergoing anesthesia often woke up feeling much better mentally. But before this could be investigated, ketamine was replaced with other forms of anesthesia, and the focus on its mental health benefits began to diminish.
The second surge of interest started with the resurgence of scientific interest in psychedelic mental health treatment options more broadly. Ketamine rapidly rose to prominence as an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and a host of other mental health challenges.
Science Supporting Ketamine Treatment for PTSD
A number of clinical trials have investigated using ketamine, either alone or in combination with talk therapy, as a treatment for PTSD. Overall, the results have been highly encouraging for people struggling with symptoms of this disorder.
One randomized trial uncovered substantial reductions in PTSD symptoms just 24 hours after a ketamine session. On average, people experienced over a 50% reduction in PTSD symptoms one day after a single treatment session. Related mental health symptoms, like those of depression, were also greatly lowered after ketamine treatment.
A number of studies have replicated these results and shown that the beneficial effects of ketamine treatment last for a substantial period of time. But perhaps most importantly, researchers have discovered that ketamine treatment can be just as effective for people who have tried conventional treatment methods without success.
5 Benefits of Ketamine Treatment for PTSD
The benefits of ketamine treatment for PTSD can be broken down into five simple factors.
1. Effectiveness
The most important benefit of ketamine treatment is that it works. For people living with PTSD, the simple fact that there are new and innovative treatment methods that deliver real results is of paramount significance.
Through both scientific studies and our own clinical experience, the improvement that clients feel after beginning ketamine-assisted treatment is nothing short of incredible.
2. Simplicity
For clients, ketamine-assisted treatment is remarkably simple. It doesn’t require months of therapy in which you slowly build coping skills and become comfortable with your therapist. Neither do you need to spend an inordinate amount of time practicing therapeutic techniques outside of sessions.
Instead, simply come into the office, meet with your providers, take the medication, and sit with a therapist who will help guide you through the treatment experience. That’s all you need to do to find relief.
3. Rapid Relief
Mental health treatment tends to be difficult for people because the results don’t happen straight away. Working with a therapist takes time, and the results you experience may still be weeks or months into the future.
In contrast, people commonly experience astounding improvements after just a single ketamine-assisted therapy session. While we encourage clients to participate in several sessions to maximize their mental health improvements, starting ketamine treatment can provide tangible relief in just days.
4. Durable Results
Most people feel the strongest sense of symptom relief just after their ketamine treatment sessions. But importantly, these effects are durable and can leave you feeling better for weeks, months, or even years.
In many cases, ketamine treatment for PTSD has led to total remission of the disorder. As a result, you can be more capable of going about life as you see fit without having to deal with the symptoms of an especially challenging mental health disorder.
5. Works Even When Traditional Methods Have Failed
Many people with PTSD have been discouraged after conventional treatment methods like cognitive behavioral therapy, eye movement desensitization, or medication approaches have failed. There are countless people in the U.S. for whom these approaches simply don’t work.
Ketamine treatment for PTSD offers a newer avenue that can provide renewed hope for recovery. In addition, ketamine treatment can also be used in conjunction with other conventional treatment methods, accelerating your progress and helping you find the relief you need.
Start Ketamine Treatment for PTSD at Plus by APN
Living with PTSD can be incredibly challenging. That’s why you deserve to have access to the support of a specially trained mental health treatment team, innovative techniques such as ketamine-assisted therapy, and compassionate support from people who truly care. Plus by APN can help you overcome your symptoms and work toward a lasting and worthwhile recovery.
We are dedicated to bringing the best and most innovative mental health treatment methods to our clients. Ketamine-assisted treatment for PTSD is just one of the comprehensive mental health services our team offers, with many techniques and modalities designed to cater to your mental health needs.
Getting started with treatment is simple. Simply call our team directly at 424.644.6486, chat with one of our representatives using the live messaging service on our website, or complete our online contact form to get more information about the treatment options available to you.
References
- Feder A, Parides MK, Murrough JW, et al. Efficacy of Intravenous Ketamine for Treatment of Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. 2014;71(6):681–688. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.62
- Feder, Adriana, et al. A Randomized Controlled Trial of Repeated Ketamine Administration for Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, Https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20050596, vol. 178, no. 2, American Psychiatric Publishing, Feb. 2021, pp. 193–202, doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20050596. February 01, 2021.
- How Common Is PTSD in Adults?” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 13 Sept. 2018, www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_adults.asp.