Overcoming the Black Dog: Ketamine and esketamine for resistant depression
Professor Phil Cowen and Dr Rupert McShane
Tuesday, 04 February 2020, 9.30am to 10.30am
Seminar Room, Department of Psychiatry
In 2000, John Krystal’s group at Yale discovered that a single sub-anaesthetic dose of intravenous ketamine provided several days of symptomatic relief in a small group of depressed patients. This effect has been widely confirmed and has led recently to the licensing of intranasal esketamine for the treatment of patients with refractory depressive illness. In this talk we will describe the development of ketamine as an antidepressant, discuss the possible mechanisms involved in its action, and appraise the likely utility of ketamine and esketamine for clinical use in the NHS.