Therapy

PT373 – Integrative Psychiatry & The Safety of At-Home Ketamine

November 15, 2022
Featuring: Dr. Ben Medrano

In this episode, David interviews Dr. Ben Medrano: Co-Medical Director with Nue Life, board-certified psychiatrist specializing in integrative psychiatry, and former Senior Vice President and US Medical Director of Field Trip Health.

Subscribe Share

In this episode, David interviews Dr. Ben Medrano: Co-Medical Director with Nue Life, board-certified psychiatrist specializing in integrative psychiatry, and former Senior Vice President and US Medical Director of Field Trip Health.

He discusses his path to Nue Life; from growing up around mental illness, to the rave scene, to Buddhism, to his years working for the underserved in an East Harlem Assertive Community Treatment, and his biggest takeaway from that time: that the healthcare system he knew was not truly helping people. He talks about stigmatization (of some modalities like electro-shock treatment, of psychedelics, and of ketamine – which seems to be stigmatized even within the psychedelic space); his concerns that the at-home ketamine model is at risk as we make our way out of the pandemic; and how at-home ketamine can drastically reduce the cost of treatment. 

Medrano tells a great story of a patient who saw incredible improvements through ketamine, and discusses some Nue Life highlights: their just-released 664 participant-study in Frontiers Psychiatry showing the safety of at-home ketamine (and that at-home is just as effective as other routes of administration); Nue Care, their model for aftercare using digital phenotyping, goals, and a scoring system (which he believes could be the new model for integrative psychiatry); and their Nue Network, which could be a solution for better education on ketamine and for granting access for patients through prescribers who typically don’t understand much about its efficacy.

Notable Quotes

“All the different interests, personalities, visions, [and] goals that are in this sort of circus of psychedelic commercialism is very necessary to understand. And for me, I think the biggest takeaway is that there is one thing that binds everybody who’s involved, and that is hope, really. I think there’s a lot of hope in this sphere.”

“The hazards of a benzodiazepine are well known, and to some extent, one might even argue that with some of these DEA-regulated substances that we do ship at home; that if we’re going to say that we need to subject ketamine to a higher standard, then we need to do it for the rest of these DEA-regulated substances, because they have very hazardous risk profiles. …I can’t help but think that there’s a little bit of …stigma [around] what it is that we’re doing.”

[On an at-home ketamine patient’s success]: “He is able to get out of the house every day and enjoy the sunshine, and the way he views his trauma is at a level that I think all of us would aspire to: really, as something that has sort of made him into the man that he is today, with something really unique and powerful to offer as a human to others – rather than as a wound.”

Links

Benmedranomd.com

Nue.life

Psychedelics Today: Free Webinar – NueLife: Empowering Patients with At-Home Ketamine Therapy

Wikipedia.org: Assertive community treatment

Fieldtriphealth.com

Legitscript.com: A Post-Pandemic Ryan Haight Act May Create Uncertainty for Telemedicine

Nue.life: Nue Life Publishes First Peer-Reviewed Study in Frontiers in Psychiatry

Frontiersin.org: Safety, effectiveness and tolerability of sublingual ketamine in depression and anxiety: A retrospective study of off-label, at-home use

Sciencedirect.com: At-home, sublingual ketamine telehealth is a safe and effective treatment for moderate to severe anxiety and depression: Findings from a large, prospective, open-label effectiveness trial

Psychiatryinstitute.com

Dr. Ben Medrano 2

In this Episode

Dr. Ben Medrano

Dr. Ben Medrano is a board certified psychiatrist specializing in Integrative Psychiatry, Ketamine-Assisted Therapy and psychedelic harm reduction and integration. He’s a graduated fellow in Integrative Psychiatry through the Integrative Psychiatry Institute’s Fellowship, where he also received additional training through their Ketamine for Medical Providers program with sponsorship and certification from the American Society of Ketamine Physicians. He continues to study within psychedelic-assisted therapies and is currently enrolled in the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Provider certificate program at the Integrative Psychiatry Institute. He is a graduate of Vajrayana Buddhist seminary and is a rigorously trained meditation instructor with over 20 years of ongoing intensive training in the Buddhist community.

Dr. Medrano is most known for his work with ketamine-assisted therapy and is the former Senior Vice President and US Medical Director of Field Trip Health – the largest in-office ketamine assisted therapy practice to date. He’s currently serving as Co-Medical Director with Nue Life in order to increase access to ketamine therapies and integrative care to the masses.

He currently serves on the Healing Maps‘ Medical Advisory Board, contributing to the elevation of quality care for psychedelic services beyond Field Trip and his own clinical practice. His work, insight, and advice have been covered in a number of articles including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Forbes, Business Insider, The New York Post, Cheddar, The Houston Chronicle, HealthLine, VeryWellMind, YahooFinance, The Dales Report, The Zoe Report, and numerous others.

Socials: Linkedin
Nue Life socials: Instagram / Facebook / Twitter