Party drugs for depression and anxiety

Party drugs for depression and anxiety

02/24/2015

For the treatment of mental illness, there are no really new drugs for decades. According to a press report, hallucinogens such as ketamine or psychoactive mushrooms are the bearers of hope. Such party drugs are supposed to help against depression and anxiety.

Party drug for depressed patients
Patients whose depression as „treatment resistant“, is difficult to treat, psychiatrist Malek Bajbouj at the Benjamin Franklin Campus of the Berlin Charité are in good hands. As the „world“ In a recent report, the director of the Center for Affective Sciences (CAS) is the only scientist in Germany to administer ketamine to intravenous depressive patients. This anesthetic and analgesic is as a party drug under the name „K“ known. Although it is not an approved antidepressant, it makes many of the most seriously depressed alive, as the newspaper writes.

„Mechanisms of action like those 30 years ago“
Many depressed patients have already gone through unsuccessful medication therapies. Antidepressants are often not effective. Really new drugs have hardly existed in the last few decades. „Today's drugs for the treatment of mental illness are still based on the same mechanisms of action as those 30 years ago“, says Felix Hasler, who works as a psychopharmacologist at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at the Humboldt University in Berlin. „Although they are minimally changed and then sold as something new, but there are no real innovations in psychotropic drugs for decades.“

„No idea what's going on in the head“
Psychiatry is in crisis, says Hasler. He explains that in the 1980s, with the emergence of imaging techniques that allowed the brain to watch in real-time, it was hoped that it would soon be possible to understand brain disease processes and develop appropriate drugs. That was not so. „One can say that we have no idea what happens in the mind when someone becomes depressed or has an anxiety disorder“, explains Hasler.

First experiment with ketamine years ago
Although Bajbouj still offers alternative methods of treating severe depression, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and deep brain stimulation, which is also used in other conditions such as cluster headache, are quite invasive treatments. The treatment with ketamine closes a big gap for him, because the drug is reliable and, above all, fast acting. This was already evident in the first experiment carried out by Carlos Zarate of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 2006. It was then discovered that many patients responded to the substance in a matter of hours, and in a large proportion of them, the depressive symptoms disappeared. Zarate was awarded a prize by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation for the discovery. The director of the NIHM, Thomas Island, said at the time: „As far as I know, this is the first report of a single-dose treatment that works so fast, profoundly and long-lasting.“

Ketamin is to be tested nationwide starting in the summer
Since then, ketamine has been shown to have very good effects in the treatment of mental illness in several studies. Bajbouj also halves the symptoms in 50 percent of the patients and even completely disappears in one third. He explains: „By now we get almost every patient out of depression with our methods.“ From summer, ketamine will be tested in a major trial at ten centers in Germany. This should be done nasally and not intravenously as before in order to simplify the treatment method. It will also be about testing the safety of such a treatment. Ketamine can also cause side effects, from nausea and dizziness that occur more frequently, to muscle cramps, to rare cardiac arrhythmias such as heart stuttering.

Long-term effect is not yet clear
The psychiatrist Ronald Duman of the Yale School of Medicine wrote in the journal together with his colleague George Aghajanian last year „Science“: „The rapid therapeutic effect of ketamine in refractory patients is the largest breakthrough in research on depression in 50 years.“ But Bajbouj is still careful, because among other things, the long-term effects of ketamine is not clear. „Experience has shown that medicines that work quickly quickly lose their effect“, so Bajbouj. „This is so far in many patients with ketamine.“

Active substance from psychoactive mushrooms against anxiety symptoms
Other substances known as drugs are also in the interest of medical research. Several renowned universities in the US are working on studies on hallucinogenic psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychoactive mushrooms. Most investigate "the effect of the substance on strong anxiety symptoms, especially in connection with life-threatening illnesses such as cancer". According to him, "psilocybin can be used to show clear improvements in symptoms, but the significance is limited due to the low number of test subjects".

Researchers find research difficult
„Ketamine, psilocybin, LSD - all these are incredibly potent substances“, says Hasler. Researching hallucinogenic substances is not easy for scientists. British psychopharmacologist David Nutt, former Labor Government drug counselor, hopes for a speedy special permit. „People and the media have become much more open to this research“, he explains angrily. „But the laws have not changed. You still have to clear a lot of bureaucracy if you want to do such studies.“

Pharmaceutical industry probably has no interest
From the Pharmalobby will probably come no help. As Hasler explains, psilocybin can not be patented, and the pharmaceutical industry can also have the image „drug“ not use. He means: „It should make no difference in scientific thinking, whether a substance marketed socially accepted as a drug or as „a Narcotic“ is prohibited.“ Whether they are in the spirit of the times on this or that side of the socially accepted line: substances that can influence the thinking, experience and behavior of people, are always potential candidates for therapeutic use. (Ad)