Ketamine Treatment Assessment
A New Paradigm for Healing
Daydream MD Ketamine Treatments Supports
When a person presents with depressive symptoms, the first line of medication is one of a group of antidepressants. Most antidepressants act on the brain chemical serotonin, which has been implicated in depression, and these medications seek to boost the amount of available serotonin, thus alleviating depression. Some people with depression do not respond to this option, indicating treatment-resistant depression or that they may be experiencing unwanted antidepressant effects.
Wolfson M.D., Phil. The Ketamine Papers: Science, Therapy, and Transformation (p. 646).
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Kindle Edition.
Step One: Assess your needs
Our team will take the time to assess your needs. Perhaps antidepressant medications have failed to treat depression in your or a family member's life. If so, we will assess if the ketamine therapy process is right for you via medical and psychological screening. This will ensure your safety, assess potential side effects of ketamine long term, and help us to create a personalized treatment plan for you based at our San Diego-area location.
Our team will take the time to assess your needs. Perhaps antidepressant medications have failed to treat depression in your or a family member's life. If so, we will assess if the ketamine therapy process is right for you via medical and psychological screening. This will ensure your safety, assess potential side effects of ketamine long term, and help us to create a personalized treatment plan for you based at our San Diego-area location.
Step Two: Prep for ketamine therapy process
Our team of therapists and facilitators will prepare you for the ketamine therapy process, which will be based on setting the intentions for your treatment, looking at the care goals (such as ketamine therapy for solely anxiety or ketamine for anxiety and depression), and preparing you for the well-being journey.
Step Three: Treatment and Safety Setting
The individual treatment sessions will take place in a serene and meditative spa-like setting. You will be monitored by a trained staff member and trip guides, who will all ensure both your physical and emotional comfort. The ketamine therapy process is often enjoyable and is often a time for patients to engage with their inner world, separate from mental health conditions.
Step Four: Ongoing Guidance
Our team will provide you with ongoing guidance after the ketamine infusions have been completed. This will help you to gain insight into the benefits of ketamine, to maintain progress with your major depressive disorder, and will help us to keep your positive responses.
Who Is a Good Candidate For Ketamine Therapy?
Clinical trials have found that ketamine helps depression, particularly major depressive disorder. There is ongoing research that suggests ketamine can play a role in treating other issues as well, like anxiety and PTSD.
Ketamine can be administered via intravenous infusion (IV), intramuscular injection (IM), or in oral and nasal spray preparations. Remember, it does not impact serotonin and instead stimulates the glutamate receptors in your brain, allowing you to feel sudden and intense relaxation. You may even have a bit of an out-of-body experience.
Ideally, to go through the ketamine infusion treatment for depression, you will have had poor or low responsiveness to all antidepressant medications and will have experienced treatment-resistant depression. This may present as excessive side effects or simply no to minimal reduction of the depressive symptoms when taking medication.
You may have also tried TMS or transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy to try and boost pulses in the brain, to no avail. Or, you may have attended psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy (individually or in a group) and found no relief.
In other cases, you may have been through a lot of different treatment combinations to get relief from the depressive symptoms. Many people undertake both psychological therapies and medications at the same time. If you have been on every kind of antidepressant medication at different dosages, it may be time to try something else. Ketamine, used for depression (we use a brand called), can provide relief from symptoms for up to a month and, at our clinic, we will also provide you with oral dosages and nasal sprays so you can keep up the effects of the ketamine therapy process at home.
There are some instances where ketamine therapy is not advised. If you are pregnant, we would not advise that you undertake ketamine for depression. If you have uncontrolled hypertension or any kind of cardiovascular disease, we will not be able to offer you this treatment. Ketamine can cause short-term, transient increases in blood pressure,, and if you are at a higher risk of cardiac issues, this can cause secondary complications.
Have you had ketamine therapy in the past and had a bad experience with it? If the answer is yes, then you may not be suitable. It is uncommon, but some people experience nausea after ketamine treatments, and, on the psychological side, some people may experience anxiety. It's not ideal if that is what you are undertaking as a treatment for depression or anxiety! If you have had any of these side effects or others that were linked to ketamine treatment in the past, then it may be unwise and unsafe to try it again.
Lastly, if you have a history of substance abuse, psychotic depression, or psychosis, then we cannot recommend that you take this treatment. If you have suffered from increased intracranial pressure in the past, the associated blood pressure changes can cause secondary issues.
Book a Ketamine Consultation
If you feel that you, a family member, or one of your patients could benefit from ketamine treatment, please reach out to our team. Here, you can book a confidential meeting with us, where we can assess your suitability for the ketamine treatment that we offer and schedule you for a consultation with our team.
You can also call us in confidence at 619-937-2055.
If you are a therapist and feel that one of your patients could benefit from ketamine therapy, feel free to call us. We have extensive experience working with psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals. Any information you can provide about your patient will be held in confidence, and if you feel this is a psychiatric emergency, we will aim to see them in 48 hours.
Meet Dr. Arsalan Azam
We would like to introduce you to Dr. Arsalan Azam, our CEO, CMO, and founder of Daydream MD.
Dr. Arsalan Azam is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician and the medical director of Daydream MD's treatments. He attended medical school as a Dean’s Scholar at Case Western Medical School and completed clinical rotations at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic.
His residency in Emergency Medicine was completed at Metropolitan/Harlem Emergency Medicine Residency. He has practiced as an emergency medical practitioner around the US, where he worked as a relief physician to help understaffed hospitals.
This emergency work led him to oversee many psychiatric emergencies, giving him the idea to start Daydream MD.
Dr. Azam has worked hard to build a team of exceptional medical professionals who oversee all areas of treatment at Daydream MD, so when you come to us for treatment, you are getting the best.
Ketamine Research
Interested in learning more about ketamine therapy? Click to read sourced third-party ketamine research, and below are a couple of our favorite sources for your ease of finding: