Glad you asked! We also wanted to know before getting into this field, so Catalyst founder Eric Tepper, MD, did a deep dive down into the research several years ago. As an anesthetic, ketamine received FDA approval in the 1970s (and is still commonly used today as an anesthetic). Research showed that small doses of ketamine also worked to quickly alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and OCD. In 2012, after years of studying ketamine, Yale School of Medicine called it "the biggest breakthrough in depression research in a half century."  Today, ketamine is being used to treat mental-health conditions at top medical centers across the country. That list of medical centers includes Harvard-affiliate McLean, Emory, and Dartmouth, and many more. Columbia University Medical Center lists ketamine as one of their "cutting-edge therapies." Research on ketamine is ongoing at Stanford, the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and Duke University. When UCSF received a large gift to create a new neuroscience center to study mood disorders, they included ketamine as a treatment.

Here is what some of those well-respected medical centers have to say about ketamine :