As an emergency room physician during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I witnessed a silent crisis unfolding alongside the virus: a surge in mental health emergencies, including depression, anxiety, trauma and substance abuse. It strained an already overburdened system and left countless people confronting deep, often existential, struggles.
I remember treating one young woman from Brooklyn who was just 28-years-old. She had been battling depression for years and had tried everything, including multiple antidepressants and talk therapy. She’d even been hospitalized a number of times. Nothing had worked for her. During a particularly dark moment, she ended up in my emergency room, confiding to me how she felt she had completely run out of options.
That was the moment that pushed me to look deeper into emerging treatments that could offer hope to patients like her. In fact, it was what eventually inspired me to co-found Keta Medical Center.
My search led me to ketamine, a drug with decades of safe use in medical settings across the globe. A constantly expanding body of high-profile research was demonstrating its effectiveness for severe and treatment-resistant mental health disorders.
Depression is one of the most common mental health conditions, but it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. About 30% of people with depression have what is called treatment-resistant depression, meaning standard antidepressants and therapy do not bring relief. Every day, we also see patients struggling with a range of other mental health challenges, such as alcohol abuse, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Many of those who come to us feel they have exhausted every other available option.
Unlike traditional medications that can take weeks to take effect, ketamine can work within hours or days, helping patients feel stable enough to re-engage with their lives and their ongoing therapy. Ketamine works on the brain’s chemistry in a way that helps “rewire” neural pathways and enable lasting change.
I’ll never forget a retired attorney in his 60s who came to one of our New York City clinics earlier this year. After decades of depression and crippling anxiety, he was skeptical anything would help. But within weeks of starting ketamine treatment supported by ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, his symptoms lifted. He started playing music again and reconnected with his family. He told us that he finally felt like himself and was at peace and felt joy for the first time in years.
According to the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health, one in five New Yorkers experiences mental illness in a given year. That number is equal to about 65% of Brooklyn’s entire population. The mayor’s office rightly points out that access to mental health care is unequal and deeply affected by factors like race, ethnicity, sex, insurance status and neighborhood poverty level. These inequities leave too many without the care they need and deserve.
Brooklyn, like the rest of New York, has no shortage of people quietly struggling with depression, anxiety or addiction. Mental health care should be personal, innovative and accessible. And it should be available here, in the communities where people live and work. To anyone reading this who feels like nothing has worked, please know there are options, and there is hope.
Dr. Haviva Malina, is the co-founder of Keta Medical Center, which provides ketamine treatment at locations throughout New York and New Jersey.
