Understanding Ketamine

Course Description:

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic also classified as a psychedelic. In the last decade it has become frequently sought as an off-label treatment for depression and mood disorders. This training is designed for therapists, psychologists, physicians, and other healthcare professionals who want to better understand the basics of ketamine and how they can ensure the best clinical outcomes for patients.

While ketamine is a powerful and promising treatment, effective and safe treatment involves far more than administering the drug itself. This course will teach medical professionals and mental health care providers how they can help their patients safely and legally access ketamine treatment, as well as prepare for and integrate those treatments using a psychedelic-assisted therapy framework.

This course includes a series of five videos which provide review of the key points presented in the Ketamine topic lectures. Videos are available as an enduring resource to participants. The live-online webinar is not recorded for replay.

Participants in this course will learn principles for screening and preparing patients for ketamine treatment, and integrating the insights generated from their experiences into follow up psychotherapy. We introduce a variety of care models including ketamine-assisted therapy, ketamine infusions paired with preparation and integration provided by a separate therapist.

The presenters of this course will present case examples and opportunities to practice real-world discussions role-play exercises. While an overview of infusion session procedures and ketamine effects is provided, complete ketamine administration instructions for medical professionals is beyond the scope of this course.

Learning Objectives:
At the end of this program, participants will be able to:

• Describe the concepts of Drug Assisted Therapy to their clients

• Describe how ketamine fits into treatment plans for depressive disorders

• Apply and Integrate ketamine into their existing frameworks for managing clients with depressive disorders

• Describe the current understandings of ketamine antidepressant mechanisms

• Describe clients that might be appropriate for ketamine infusion therapy

• Describe clients that might NOT be appropriate for ketamine infusion therapy

• List the legal and practical hurdles in accessing this treatment for their clients

• List the differences between the medical and recreational use of ketamine

• Plan how to psychologically prepare their clients for the ketamine sessions

• Prepare their clients in integrating the experiences from the ketamine sessions into their larger psychotherapeutic goals

• Demonstrate specific psychotherapeutic techniques to maximize behavioral and cognitive changes during the neuroplastic windows opened by ketamine

• Describe how ketamine could play a long term role in mental healthcare