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Doctors at one Long Island hospital are using ketamine treatments to fight clinical depression – a medicine one patient says works better and faster than decades on Prozac.
Patients suffering from severe depression at Mather Hospital are taking an esketamine nasal spray called Spravato, which 66-year-ld Ellen Talmage said has changed her life in a way other drugs could not.
Some 62% of Mather’s near-40 patients in the program report having seen improvements in symptoms.
“I’m so much better that after this [interview], I’m picking up my daughter-in-law and the two grandbabies, and we’re going to the ocean,” Talmage said.
It’s a far cry from how the once reclusive Baiting Hollow woman used to need anxiety medication just for a trip to the grocery store, where she would often break down crying.
“I booked tickets once to a really expensive concert for my birthday, and I couldn’t go – that was just part of the deal… anybody who’s had it for that long, you miss out on a lot of Christmases,” she said.
Doctors at the Northwell hospital believe the treatment could be a game changer for the future.
“From going to not being able to get out of bed and dress yourself to thinking about the future and having a job and having a purpose and meaning in life,” Dr. Erin Dainer, Mather Hospital’s psychiatry chair in Port Jefferson, told The Post.
“I don’t see that with other treatments the way I do with this.”
The multiweek program begins with a low dose of 56 milligrams, administered in person twice a week, and is gradually increased as patients respond.
Users are held for two hours after each session in comfortable chairs with TV and music to be monitored for safety reasons, as the drug can cause some vivid reactions.
Talmage likened it to riding Space Mountain.
“That’s the best way I can kind of describe it – because it’s definitely colors and whatever,” she said.
While conventional antidepressants target the hormones serotonin and norepinephrine, the spray instead focuses on “a completely different pathway” – hitting NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptors at the cellular level for mood altering.
Mather inpatient psychiatrist Paniz Johari believes the FDA-approved esketamine will play a seismically shifting role in managing treatment-resistant depression treatment within the next decade.
“I think that’s hard to say, but at the rate we’re going, it’s looking like that to me,” she said.
The Mather staff is also well aware of the stigma surrounding vastly different on-the-street ketamine or “Special K,” like that of which “Friends” star Matthew Perry fatally overdosed.
“Matthew Perry absolutely should never have happened,” Dainer said.
“That’s why we have so many regulations with this medication because we want to ensure safety; we want to ensure efficacy.”
Another patient, who wished to remain anonymous, credited the treatments with giving him the courage to pursue becoming a peer-to-peer counselor to help others who are suffering.
“I think it’s a big thing between the ketamine and helping other people, that it gives you a purpose,” he said.