Thread by @Telegraph

🔴Around 30% of people do not respond to existing treatments of antidepressant drugs, psychotherapy or electroconvulsive therapy.

🧠Could the future of treating depression be ketamine infusions – or even a ‘pacemaker for the brain’?

Thread ⬇️

telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness…

One in five adults in the UK has symptoms of anxiety or depression.

📈There is evidence that the pandemic has seen rates spike even further

❌For many, the mainstay treatments offer limited benefit

🔎A recent study of antidepressants, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that even after two years of treatment, six out of 10 who felt well enough to stop taking them suffered a relapse within a year

There are also concerns about side-effects including:

❌Heart disease
❌Strokes
❌Obesity
❌Type 2 diabetes

💊The need for an alternative to prescription pills has never been greater.

💭A range of new antidepressant therapies are causing many to rethink depression and how we treat it

🔴Ketamine and the psychedelic drug psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – are attracting growing attention for their potential benefits for mental health problems in recent years

Such is the evidence that some NHS trusts now offer ketamine treatment for severe depression, as a paid for service

🧠Scientists are still not entirely sure how it works, but while SSRIs attempt to increase the levels of serotonin in the brain, ketamine is known to target another chemical called glutamate which is linked to a whole variety of mental illnesses

Like SSRIs, psilocybin also targets serotonin, but in a subtly different way.

Psilocybin helps relax thoughts and emotions, which appears to help depression patients

🗣️"There’s a lot of excitement about these new agents and I can understand why," says Steven Marwaha, professor of psychiatry at the University of Birmingham

🧠Another area of research showing promise, with a lower risk of side-effects, is brain stimulation

🔎Read more on how scientists in California helped dramatically alleviate a woman’s depression with an electrical brain implant here ⬇️

telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness…