"Dennis Charney, MD - The Hope of Ketamine for Depression" - Kevin Kunzmann
Dennis Charney, MD, dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and president of academic affairs for the Mount Sinai Health System, discusses the approval of ketamine, the drug’s progression to the market, the approval’s significance for patients with treatment-resistant depression, and what’s to come next in potential ketamine care. “Depression is among the most concerning medical diseases. It’s common. The estimates vary, but I would say it’s about 20-25 million Americans who at some point have suffered from major depression. It affects your life, in terms of employment, relationships, your ability to experience pleasure. And in those patients who don’t respond to the traditional anti-depressant, those symptoms are magnified—in that the patient feels hopeless, that they’re never going to get better. In the worst cases, they are suicidal. The fact that esketamine has been shown to effectively treat treatment-resistant depression, in many patients, this offers hope. Previously, there was not much hope.”
— Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, President, Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System
