Over the past 10 years, dissociative anesthetics (ketamine) and hallucinogens (LSD, mushrooms, etc) have shown positive results
at rapid acting antidepressant drugs. However, these is a major issue with these studies as they do not have active controls. For example, almost every drug that produces hallucinogenic effects has been shown to produce antidepressant effects as compared to placebo. Drugs that work in a similar manner to ketamine that do NOT produce hallucinogenic effects fail to produce antidepressant effects. The attached study suggest that the hallucinogenic effects of ketamine predict the antidepressant effect. Please answer the following questions: 1) Is this a "true antidepressant effect" or rather a placebo/demand characteristic? 2) If these is actually relieving depressive symptoms in patients with major depression, do we care if it is not a "true antidepressant effect" (i.e. demand characteristic)?
