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Spravato® offers hope to people with major depressive disorder when other treatments don’t work. Lawrence Abah, DNP, MS, MSN, PMHNP-BC, FNP-BC, FPA, and his team at Holistic Behavioral & TMS Therapy in Las Vegas, Nevada, use Spravato to help patients in despair. Spravato is a simple-to-use nasal spray containing esketamine, a drug derived from the anesthetic ketamine. Call Holistic Behavioral & TMS Therapy today or book an appointment online to see if you’re a good candidate for Spravato.
What is Spravato?
Spravato is a treatment for patients with major depressive disorder that isn’t improving with other therapies. The Holistic Behavioral & TMS Therapy team prescribes Spravato with antidepressant medications to ease severe depression symptoms.
Spravato is a spray that goes in your nose rather than a pill you swallow. You need to visit Holistic Behavioral & TMS Therapy in person to take your Spravato. After that, the team monitors you for several hours so they can act if you experience any adverse reactions.
If all is well, you can then go home. You must have someone drive you because you might feel drowsy, and your responses will likely be slower.
How does Spravato work?
The active ingredient in Spravato is esketamine. This is an FDA-approved form of ketamine, a powerful anesthetic drug.
Intravenous (IV) ketamine therapy has proven benefits for treating depression. Treatment involves regular visits of 40-60 minutes, during which the medication drips directly into your bloodstream through a cannula (flexible tube) in an arm vein.
Spravato intranasal spray offers a convenient, effective alternative to ketamine IV infusions.
Why might I need Spravato treatment?
Spravato might help if you suffer from major depressive disorder (depression) and don’t improve despite treatment.
Depression causes a continual low mood with persistent hopelessness, sadness, self-loathing, and other negative emotions. Patients with major depressive disorder struggle to function, making work challenging and affecting their ability to care for themselves properly. Some people with depression become suicidal.
Psychotherapy and antidepressant medication very often help reduce depression symptoms. The Holistic Behavioral & TMS Therapy team offers expert interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) alongside medicines for people with depression, and most find it highly effective.
However, some patients fail to improve even after lengthy treatment. This problem is known as treatment-resistant depression, for which your provider might recommend Spravato or another innovative treatment — transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
How many Spravato treatments will I need?
You must commit to a series of Spravato treatments for the best results. A typical course of treatment would involve two sessions a week for the first four weeks, then one treatment weekly for a month. After this, you typically take Spravato once every week or two weeks.
Call Holistic Behavioral & TMS Therapy today or book an appointment online to discover more about Spravato and how it could help with your treatment-resistant depression.