For how we live.
Ketamine cuts suicidal thinking fast but briefly. A 50-person trial gave low-dose buprenorphine afterward and saw the effect hold — an early, single-centre result in a high-risk group.
A US trial found ketamine at least as good as electroconvulsive therapy; a Swedish trial found ECT clearly better. The gap lies in whom they treated and how they scored success.
In the Ket-BD trial, four IV ketamine infusions over two weeks lowered depression scores more than an active placebo, with no manic switches observed in 63 analysed patients.
The KADS extension followed 130 patients who had already been through a ketamine trial. Response fell from 30% at treatment's end to 17% a month later.
The meta-analysis behind ketamine's widening off-label use for suicidal crisis quantifies what 1,166 patients across two decades of trials actually showed — and where the evidence runs out.
A systematic review screened 3,857 records and found three eligible studies, every one produced by a US commercial provider and every one at critical risk of bias.