Long-term Ketamine's Effect on Suicidal Ideation.

Ketamine is one of the few medications in psychaitry that reduces suicidal ideation ( SI ) . The question is how long does that effect persist. The study by Pan Y et al, published in Translational Psychaitry 2024; 14(1):327 looks at the real-world data in recurrent major depressive disorder.

This study looked at 22014 patietns who received ketamine with or without antidepressants and matched them with an equal number of patietns who had similar profile of depresison but who did not receive ketamine. Then research team analyzed the data from ER admissions one week, 1 month, 3 months, six months and 9 months later. In the first month, Ketamine lowerd the SI risk by 33 % , over nine months , the reduction was about 22%. The difference between ketamine and other treatments gradually narrowed from one to nine months but remained statistically significant. These results suggest that ketamine is an important tool for patietns with depresison and SI.