A spray that has ketamine-like properties has been denied further use by the NHS, despite it lifting users moods in a few hours.
The National Institute for Health and Care and Excellence (NICE) says “there are too many uncertainties about the correlation between the price and clinical benefits of esketamine.” It’s only ever used for people with very serious and hard to treat cases of depression. The main concern is that it costs £10,000 per treatment, per person. So the question is whether its benefits are worth the price.
Around 300 million people in the world are depressed.
Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, said: “People with depression are currently relying on medications that are 30 years old.
“Although these drugs can be life-saving for some people, they can have unpleasant side-effects and do not work for everyone. It is therefore deeply disappointing that the first new compound that works in a fundamentally different way on the brain should not have passed this hurdle. This is especially so because people can take as much as six to eight weeks to feel the full effects of most anti-depressants. We hope this setback will serve only to inspire pharmaceutical companies, researchers and others to discover new ways of treating serious depression.”
Additionally, there is a risk that the drug could be abused for recreational purposes, which poses a risk to a users health, and is a very pricey habit – which will cost the health services a substantial amount.
