Suicide, COVID-19, and Ketamine


Book Description

Why a book about suicide, COVID-19, and Ketamine? These delicate topics are more inter-related than you might think. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year 800,000 people die from suicide. But have you wondered about the long-term unintended consequences of COVID-19? The deluge of mental-health problems like depression, suicide, and drug overdoses resulting from the pandemic. Depression, suicide and drug overdoses have been a problem since long before the pandemic. But COVID-19 has made the situation worse: it is more of a crisis than a pandemic. Lockdowns have fueled a litany of tragedies: suicides, drug overdoses, heightened crime, starvation, financial ruin, and much more. Adolescent and adult mental illness have skyrocketed during the crisis, and the tsunami of post-traumatic stress, depression, and suicides will follow. The mental-health consequences will persist long after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. Because of the lockdowns, we expect millions of people will die of hunger and postponed medical treatments, a potential outcome that, unfortunately, has developed less notice. The result is a "perfect storm" of suicides and drug overdose deaths. Mental-health practitioners are employing everything, including telemedicine, to help people battle this threat. Suicide is subtle, and the decision to take your own life is often impulsive. The treatment of suicide and depression is complex, with current medications taking weeks or months to work. When a loved one commits suicide, they leave many unanswered questions. Constant thoughts of "what" and "why," permeate the minds of those left behind. We do not have many effective treatments for suicide. But there is one drug that can often stop suicide in its tracks: ketamine. Few are aware that this decades-old anesthetic and party drug might save your loved one's or even your life. Our goal is to convince you ketamine is a legitimate path to treat mental disorders. Simply said, ketamine works. If your loved one was suicidal, would you suggest trying ketamine? Or use it yourself?




The Revolutionary Ketamine


Book Description

This isn't a new drug, but it's now being used to treat depression with amazing results. What exactly is it? Is it safe? Is it right for you or your loved one? Suicide captures everyone’s attention. Suicide is a tragedy usually preceded by plenty of pain. About 1 million go through with the act each year. Imagine if your loved one is determined to end their life, and you could get them help. After reading Revolutionary Ketamine, you will understand: Suicide’s devastating cost to society and how to prevent it Why children and adolescents are committing suicide How ketamine stops suicide in its tracks Suicide is the stuff of other people’s nightmares until it happens to someone you love. Time simply stops, leaving you wondering what could have been done. Suicidal ideations hijack our brains, telling us to end our lives prematurely. What if we could remove this hijacking device? Ketamine is the one drug we have today that can safely halt suicidal ideations, yet most have never heard of it. To those who say more studies are needed to know if ketamine helps with suicidal ideations and depression, I offer you this admonition before trying the drug. If you are suffering from depression and suicidal ideations, the risk versus reward is clearly in favor of using ketamine now. Don’t wait. Dr. Edwards, the author of Revolutionary Ketamine, is committed to helping those who need never become statistics at all and will equip you with the tools to save your loved one’s life, or possibly your own.




Suicide: Phenomenology and Neurobiology


Book Description

This book addresses the phenomenology, demographics, and neurobehavioral aspects of suicidal behavior and its risk factors, underscoring common neurobehavioral threads among different approaches which may underlie such extreme behavior. It additionally provides an overview of new approaches, such as imaging techniques to identify at-risk individuals or in response to drug treatment associated with suicidal behavior, neurodevelopmental approaches, genetic and epigenetic linkages to suicidal behavior, animal models of specific risk factors, as well as potential biomarkers being employed to help assess risk.




Ketamine for Treatment-Resistant Depression


Book Description

This book brings together an international group of clinicians and researchers from a broad swath of inter-related disciplines to offer the most up-to-date information about clinical and preclinical research into ketamine and second-generation “ketamine-like” fast-acting antidepressants. Currently available antidepressant medications act through monoaminergic systems, are ineffective for many individuals suffering from depression, and are associated with a delayed onset of peak efficacy of several months. The unexpected emergence of ketamine, an anesthetic N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, as a rapid-acting antidepressant has reinvigorated CNS drug discovery research and catalyzed investigation in patient populations historically ignored in antidepressant drug development programs, particularly treatment-resistant patients and those with suicidality. Recent industry and academic research efforts have coalesced to explore NMDA receptor and glutamatergic molecular targets that lack ketamine’s psychotomimetic side effects and abuse liability but retain its rapid onset of efficacy. However, many fundamental questions remain regarding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects and the puzzling persistence of benefits observed in some patients following a single dose. This book examines how insights from these studies are forging new conceptual models of the neurobiology of stress-related affective, anxiety, and addictive disorders and the nature of treatment resistance. It also discusses how ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects provide a scientific platform to facilitate innovation in clinical trial designs pertaining to patient selection, choice of control group, outcome measures, and dose-optimization. This book brings together data and insights from this rapidly expanding and extraordinarily promising field of study. Readers will be able to extract integrated themes and useful insights from the material contained in these diverse chapters and appreciate the paradigm-shifting contributions of ketamine to modern psychiatry and clinical neuroscience research.




Rheumatology in Questions


Book Description

This book covers all fields in rheumatology and aims to help readers comprehend, familiarize and evaluate their knowledge of the subject area. It contains short questions and concise answers on definitions, pathogenetic aspects, clinical and laboratory manifestations, differential diagnosis and the management of all rheumatic diseases. The book also provides questions and answers on major aspects of basic immunology, valuable for understanding underlying immunological mechanisms of autoimmune rheumatic diseases. Illustrations and images help present information in a clear and schematic way.




Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention


Book Description

This book explores suicide prevention perspectives from around the world, considering both professionals’ points of view as well as first-person accounts from suicidal individuals. Scholars around the globe have puzzled over what makes a person suicidal and what is in the minds of those individuals who die by suicide. Most often the focus is not on the motives for suicide, nor on the phenomenology of this act, but on what is found from small cohorts of suicidal individuals. This book offers a tentative synthesis of a complex phenomenon, and sheds some light on models of suicide that are less frequently encountered in the literature. Written by international experts, it makes a valuable contribution to the field of suicidology that appeals to a wide readership, from mental health professionals to researchers in suicidology and students.




Ketamine for Depression


Book Description

Given the unacceptably high rates of suffering, disability and premature death experienced by people with treatment-resistant depression and the surprisingly low rates of problems arising from the use of ketamine to treat the disorder, this is a therapy that all patients and their doctors should be discussing. This book summarises the research that has been carried out into ketamine for the treatment of depression over the past 15 years and, most importantly, describes different ways of using ketamine that are both practical and cost–effective. Currently most ketamine therapy is given intravenously in specialised clinics at considerable expense, but the author has successfully treated patients with low-dose sublingual ketamine and his patients have been able to safely take this at home. Profits from the sales of this book will assist further research into the use of ketamine for the treatment of depression.




The Ketamine Papers


Book Description

The Ketamine Papers opens the door to a broad understanding of this medicine's growing use in psychiatry and its decades of history providing transformative personal experiences. Now gaining increasing recognition as a promising approach to the treatment of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other psychological conditions, ketamine therapies offer new hope for patients and clinicians alike. With multiple routes of administration and practices ranging from anesthesia to psychotherapy, ketamine medicine is a diverse and rapidly growing field. The Ketamine Papers clarifies the issues and is an inspiring introduction to this powerful tool for healing and transformation--from its early use in the 1960s to its emerging role in the treatment of depression, suicidality, and other conditions. This comprehensive volume is the ideal introduction for patients and clinicians alike, and for anyone interested in the therapeutic and transformative healing power of this revolutionary medicine.