Overview

An increasing number of clinics run by anesthesiologists and psychiatrists administer ketamine as an intravenous infusion, generally over 40 minutes (the NIMH model), producing varying degrees of mild altered consciousness.

Many patients become better with a series of treatments—usually six over two to three weeks. Given the failure of usual psychiatric methods to improve significant depression, ketamine’s entry has proven to be a boon to many who suffer from treatment-resistant depression (TRD). However, in these medicalized settings, attention to the consciousness and experience of patients is essentially nil. Ketamine is a mind-altering medicine, and the experiences engendered are valuable. The ketamine experience within a psychotherapeutic milieu offers precious opportunities for personal growth and awareness.

In the emerging realm of psychedelic psychotherapy, currently, ketamine is the only legally available psychedelic medicine. Embedding the range of its effects in assisted psychotherapy offers an extraordinary opportunity for rapid change, healing, and integration in everyday life. Practitioners using mind-altering substances must know through their own experiences their potential actions, benefits, and difficulties. KAP training offers a foundation for utilizing the unique properties of ketamine as a therapeutic methodology. Building KAP practices now will serve to prepare for the advent of the following medicines coming into our toolbox. Developing specific therapeutic methods for psychedelic psychotherapy and establishing a rigorous standard of care is essential for our work to be great, enduring, beneficial, and healing.

We encourage our trainees to join our expanding international presence through subsequent membership in our Ketamine Psychotherapy Associates, also a program of the Ketamine Research Foundation. KPA furthers the organization of our practices, and our understanding of this medicine is a constant update to our skills and clinical techniques and enlarges our horizons by making us aware of the variety of therapeutic strategies and their application to psychedelic psychotherapy. 

PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

The KTC workshop program is for experienced professionals who already have mastery in their respective fields (medicine, psychiatry, psychology, nurses, hospice, and palliative care) and who are interested in providing treatment in the context of a collaboration of medical and psychological skill sets to create a team approach for delivering KAP. As ketamine is a Schedule 3 substance and must be prescribed and overseen by licensed medical professionals that include MDs, DOs, Naturopathic Physicians, and FNPs, team building is essential. As is the work of those trained as psychotherapists.

In our workshops, many participants from different medical fields—other than psychiatry—are evolving into KAP practitioners and adapting KAP and ketamine work to their various practices.

THE UNIQUE BENEFITS OF KAP

Ketamine, unlike conventional psychiatric medications, provides a gateway to states of awareness that are relatively free from normative defensive inhibitions and rigidly patterned behaviors. It acts as a time-out from the ordinary mind, its obsessive and negative patterns, and an opportunity for transcendent views of the Self and one’s context. Often, it serves as a relief from depression and can offer a pleasant expansiveness in which other opportunities emerge. KAP provides the practitioner and patient with a unique methodology to facilitate understanding, working through, and managing various issues, from life transitions to mood disorders to personality issues. KAP sessions tend to last for two to three hours and, like MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy, facilitate building a therapeutic nest for safety and trust and a higher level of engagement for therapists and patients.

THE EXPERIENCE OF KAP

Trance and transformative effects of ketamine are inevitable—whatever the mode of administration–and offer great possibilities for growth and development. Using only the drug effect of ketamine as administered in a medicalized setting misses the potential for deep psychological, spiritual, and emotional experience and change that a therapeutic approach using this medicine may well provide. While many undoubtedly have significant anti-depressant benefits when ketamine is administered intravenously without attendant psychotherapy, KTC believes that an excellent opportunity for more profound healing is not taken. In a psychotherapeutic milieu, KAP provides easier access to traumatized mind and body. It enables the working through of trauma to minimize the negative effect on living in the present. KAP provides a time-out from obsession and depression and a positive and alternative view of life’s possibilities. The KAP psychotherapeutic context is extended and ongoing and occurs within a nest, encouraging trust and new behavior. Awakening mind—consciousness–is an essential aspect of anchoring change and knowing the Self. KAP training promotes and assists in developing this awareness in practitioners and supports therapeutic work with skill and process acquisition and development.