Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article is a step forward to save peoples' lives. Autistic people often suffer from depression, or suffer horrible barrages of side effects that make traditional anti-depressants painful and frustrating, to say the least. Ketamine has been shown to quickly treat depression, especially types otherwise unaffected by anti-depressants. This has been particularly notable in emergency rooms, where people sometimes arrive because they would otherwise immediately seek their own deaths. Having a fast-acting treatment available is exceedingly helpful, but most ERs and other treatment centers have been slow to use this treatment.
This hesitance is because there hasn't been much research into the treatment. Very few studies have looked into the effects of small doses on depression in the really rigorous manner required to make sound scientific decisions. A study like this, looking into what would essentially be the ER's go-to treatment for a suicidal patient, is thus invaluable.
I was particularly cheered to see the complete lack of addiction noted. Ketamine has been compared to addictive drugs in the past by less informed groups and individuals, so it's good to see that this study noted no such effects.
Perhaps more importantly, though, the FDA has apparently approved a nasal spray variant for the treatment of depression. For anyone that doesn't already know: "treatment-resistant depression" is not in fact treatment-resistant. It's merely not fixable with the standard barrage of anti-depressant pharmaceuticals. Things like proper nutrition, exercise, time outdoors, and mindfulness can be combined to "treat" depression, but the typical treatment plan in US Healthcare is "here's some pills." Anything that doesn't respond to pills is declared "treatment-resistant." I have Opinions about this, suffice it to say.
In any case, I'm going to continue to keep an eye on ketamine and its progress. Too many autistic lives are lost to suicide. While the systems that drive us to suicide must also change, we need our adults to survive and make the case for those systems to change. We can't rely on parents and professionals to do it for us. And having a fast-acting treatment for depression helps everyone, not just autistic people.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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