Here at Nepenthe Wellness Center, ketamine infusion therapy is provided for anxiety treatment as a fully customized treatment to meet your individual needs. Contact us for more details about what you can expect from this revolutionary treatment.
Have you ever felt tight-chested and excessive sweating before entering the examination hall or shivering and panicking before a viva or job interview?
These fretful symptoms automatically fade once you are out of that situation. These troubling symptoms are expected for our body to prepare for something important. We can also call it a fight or flight condition.
However, for some people, these symptoms tend to appear more often due to overthinking and without any particular reason.
This is where it becomes a risk for the person to the point where he cannot even go about his daily chores due to these anxiety issues.
Here is what to look for to find out whether those anxiety attacks you are having are normal or are actually an anxiety disorder and whether you need any treatment for them.
When should you see a psychiatrist to treat your anxiety?
First of all, consult your family physician or a trusted psychiatrist and discuss your symptoms with him. Inquire if you need any sort of treatment or medication for this purpose.
You need to understand that anxiety symptoms go hand in hand with depression. People who go through a depression phase at some point also experience anxiety in certain situations.
The most common type of chronic anxiety is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, also known as GAD. The most prominent symptom of GAD is extreme panic while thinking about certain situations and occasions.
The primary purpose of going to a psychiatrist is to discuss your personal and social life issues so that they can figure out the reason for your anxiety. The reason behind feeling anxious could be different for every person. It could be due to:
- Side-effect of some medicine that you are taking
- Menu-pause for some middle-aged women
- A chronic illness
- Hormonal imbalance
- An under-lined medical health condition
It is the best solution to point out the problem and then solve it with the help of a trusted person either through medication, consultation, or even sometimes with ketamine therapy.
How ketamine is effective for anxiety?
Ketamine was initially approved as an anesthetic and is one of the controlled drugs. But now, this drug is vastly being used to treat mood disorders all over the globe.
Studies show that ketamine therapy is used to treat anxiety and depression symptoms. According to recent research, a single infusion of ketamine proved effective for anxiety disorder symptoms such as panic, hysteria, and perturbance.
Previously, patients with anxiety were only to be treated with medication such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and SNRIs (selective nor-epinephrine reuptake inhibitors) or benzo-diazepine. Other than that, patients also get help with therapy sessions and consultation with psychiatrists. But 30 to 40 percent of patients could not show remission of symptoms with those standard methods.
For such patients, ketamine infusion therapy tends to work well and improve their mental health condition even with a single drip.
In a small study, ketamine was given to anxiety patients, and it showed better results rather than the other controlled drug, midazolam.
Also, the patients who got ketamine infusion showed better responses for almost 14 weeks. This means that its maintenance time is more than other medications.
Patients require customized treatment plans which depend on their needs and the severity of their symptoms.
Almost 40 percent of anxiety patients require a maintenance dose of ketamine for depression or anxiety.
The protocol for that maintenance dose is carefully personalized by monitoring the patient’s behavior and when he starts to show recurrence signs. Then, a suitable schedule is settled so that the patient can get the ketamine infusion again if there is a situation of relapse.
How does anxiety disorder develop?
No explicit symptom of anxiety disorder could differentiate it from a regular anxiety attack. Therefore, it is not easy to diagnose this mental condition on your own.
But if you feel that your anxiety symptoms are taking the best of your nerves, you must talk to your consultant doctor or a trusted psychiatrist. The common symptoms include,
- Increased heart rate
- Chest tightening and heavy breaths
- Agitation and excessive perspiration
- Constant obsession and fears of specific situations
Anxiety test online:
Nowadays, many websites and online forums related to mental health offer free tests to help you diagnose. The main purpose of this kind of test is to increase public knowledge about mental health and to help you understand your needs.
So that you can address it without feeling hesitant and talk about it without feeling worried.
It also helps to know that if your symptoms are chronic and severe and you need to see a psychiatrist talk to him about your condition and get treatment in time.
Some of these surveys are free and introduced by psychiatry students to help them collect data related to their research topics.
How to know if you need medication for anxiety?
Mostly anti-anxiety drugs and other standard medications used to treat anxiety take up to two to six weeks to show better results. But ketamine works way faster than that. It can make the symptoms disappear or at least make them under control in not more than two hours.
Also, what makes ketamine infusion therapy even more compelling is that it only affects glutamate receptors of the brain cells, while the other medications also boost other brain chemicals, such as serotonin.
Bottom line:
The first thing to make a concept about this state of mental health and understand it properly is that we all somehow and somewhere fell under this spectrum, depending upon our symptoms. Furthermore, it’s important to understand how to get professionally diagnosed with anxiety.
Some people experience minimal to mild symptoms such as distress before or after the exam. Some people go through a little more extent of emotions but still are able to manage themselves. But there is another group of people who are completely overtaken by their distress to the point that it becomes an impairment for life.
If you find yourself distressing too much and very often over crucial matters, it might be necessary to adequately address this matter.
References:
- Norelli, S. (2019, June 5). What is Test Anxiety? Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://blogs.campbell.edu/what-is-test-anxiety/
- Nepenthe Wellness Center. (2022, September 7). Ketamine Treatment for Anxiety at Nepenthe Cedar Park, TX. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://www.nepenthewellness.com/anxiety/
- Just a moment. . . (n.d.-b). Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20451253211056743
- health | Your calm mind assistant. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://sensa.health/stress-anxiety/
- Yasgur, B. S., MA. (2022, July 5). Ketamine: A Promising Novel Therapy for Anxiety and PTSD. Psychiatry Advisor. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/home/topics/anxiety/ketamine-a-promising-novel-therapy-for-anxiety-and-ptsd/
