Nurturing Your Path to Healing and Growth.
We are dedicated to helping you achieve lasting healing and growth and are proud to offer a unique and cutting edge approach to mental health treatment that combines the powerful insights of psychotherapy with the transformative effects of ketamine.
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) Can help accelerate the brains natural healing process and relieve symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD,
Ketamine has been shown to have a remarkable impact on the brain's neural pathways, leading to increased neuroplasticity. This means that ketamine can help the brain form new connections and break away from old patterns, ultimately improving mood and reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Increased clarity, creativeness, and calmness is often experienced.
Why KAP?
The Empowering
KAP Retreatment protocol
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Our KAP sessions involve 1-3 preparation sessions with Julia Grace to determine your goals and intentions, have appropriate psychoeducation about KAP and address any concerns.
During preparation you will have an intake session with our medical doctor who will review your medical history and determine if KAP is appropriate. If approved, the doctor will prescribe the medication, which is picked up by you from a pharmacy and brought to your KAP session.
But that's not all—our approach extends beyond traditional methods. As part of the preparation sessions, we integrate additional modalities such as hypnosis, art therapy, and internal family systems. These techniques further enhance your preparation process, promoting deeper self-understanding, clarity, and readiness for the transformative experiences that lie ahead.
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A sacred and comfortable space is created in a non-clinical environment where the client is invited to lay down with silent disco headphones - with curated music by zendo stereo designed for psychedelic journeying and an eye mask on for this powerful inward journey. A therapist is present and sitting by the client but not interacting during the session. This allows the client to fully experience the journey, gain new insights, and develop a deeper connection with themselves.
During your session, our therapist, Julia Grace will monitor you closely and provide a safe and supportive environment for your journey. For 1:1 session a 3 hour window is carved out for the session, for group sessions, expect 5-hour session.
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The client has the opportunity to integrate and process their experience with Julia Grace and the group if in a group setting. This can be done verbally through psychotherapy sessions or through non-verbal expressive arts therapy, such as art or dance therapy.
These options are designed to help the client process and integrate what they learned during the KAP journey and formulate practical ways to take advantage of the increased neuroplasticity to make positive changes in their life and continue on their path to healing and growth.
Integration is a vital aspect of Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) as it allows patients to process and integrate their experience, helping them to make sense of their insights and apply them to their everyday lives. KAP has been shown to promote neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to reorganize itself and form new connections. Its highly important that patients can take advantage of the neuroplasticity promoted by KAP and make long-lasting changes in thoughts, behaviors, and emotional regulation.
We offer different integration options including 1:1 or group therapy integration with others that have done this treatment. These options are designed to help you process your KAP experience, integrate what you learned, and further develop your insights and coping skills.
Our creative and integrative approach
We take a holistic approach to your healing journey by incorporating various therapeutic modalities into our protocol including expressive arts therapy, dance movement therapy, hypnotherapy, group therapy and internal family systems. We believe in the power of creativity, introspection, and self-expression to enhance the transformative effects of Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP). We believe in the power of group and facilitate a connective and creative transformational group experience.
FAQs
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Ketamine is a legal, safe and effective medicine used to treat a variety of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and PTSD. Ketamine has rapidly-acting antidepressant and mood-enhancing effects, which can begin to take effect within 1-2 hours after treatment. It works by blocking the brain's NMDA receptors as well as by stimulating AMPA receptors, which are thought to help form new synaptic connections and boost neural circuits that regulate stress and mood. Ketamine has also been shown to enhance overall neuroplasticity for lasting symptom improvement.
Ketamine can be administered in variety of ways, including IV infusion, intramuscular injection, via nasal spray and using sublingual lozenges.
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The effects of ketamine, which most patients find pleasant, last for approximately 45 minutes. These effects can make you feel "far from" your body, and facilitate shifts in perception that can often feel expansive in nature. Your motor and verbal abilities will be reduced. Once these effects subside, we'll spend the remainder or our appointment giving you space to process and discuss your experience. While it may feel hard to articulate what happens during the experience, patients feel like the insights gained are clearer.
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Ketamine’s inhibitory effect on NMDA Receptors causes a persistent increase in glutamate release in certain regions of the brain, which in turn engenders and sustains antidepressant effects. This mechanism also augments synaptic plasticity and so ketamine’s antidepressant effects are not only rapid in onset, but are also quite durable, outlasting the drug’s physical presence in the body post administration.
“Ketamine has been demonstrated to stimulate the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that supports adult neurogenesis. Ketamine has also been shown to augment synaptogenesis, thereby enhancing synaptic function and plasticity far greater than the SSRIs and other common antidepressants. Studies show, ketamine led to increased growth and improved function in the dendritic spine synapses of the prefrontal cortex. It has been hypothesized that ketamine rapidly enhances neural connectivity by creating new connections between already-existing neurons – a process that yields benefits much more rapidly than waiting for new nerve cells to grow. This improved connectivity between neurons may very well alleviate mood imbalances.”-Expert taken from Read more here.
More Resources and Research:
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Ketamine may regenerate synaptic connections between brain cells damaged by stress and depression, according to new Yale-led research. Read full article here.
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Ketamine is readily available, is inexpensive to manufacture, and has a relatively good safety profile. It is likely for these reasons that it is the most popular anesthesia drug worldwide, used to induce temporary anesthesia, amnesia, and paralysis. Read full article here.
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Ketamine is a Schedule 3 prescription drug that has been safely used in anesthesia for decades. Many years ago, it was discovered that as anesthesia wore off, patients were having unique and often disturbing psychedelic effects for which they were unprepared. Read full article here.
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Ketamine is a dissociative drug that has been used medically since the 1970s primarily as an anesthetic agent but also for various psychiatric applications. Read full article here.
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Over the past 50 years, ketamine has solidified its position in both human and veterinary medicine as an important anesthetic with many uses. Read full article here.
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In 2019, esketamine received FDA approval as an adjunctive treatment for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in adults. Read full article here.
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Research over the last two decades has established ketamine as a safe, effective, fast-acting, and sustained antidepressant that significantly reduces adverse symptoms associated with depression, even in patients who are treatment resistant. Read full article here.
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At-home Ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) with psychosocial support and remote monitoring through telehealth platforms addresses access barriers, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Read full article here.
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The obsessive–compulsive spectrum refers to disorders drawn from several diagnostic categories that share core features related to obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), such as obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors and anxiety. Read full article here.