Greenwood clinic uses novel treatment for depression

The cycle would not stop.

Darlene Myers was mired in anxiety and depression. Following her son’s death by suicide, she had continuously been overwhelmed by waves of negative feelings.

Medications and counseling didn’t always work; the grief could derail any progress she made. Myers wasn’t sure how she’d ever overcome it.

But she has found relief in a novel source — ketamine.

“I’d gone to counseling after he passed, even before he passed. They’d put me on the anti-depressants, but I’d get so fed up with the side effects of it I’d just quit,” Myers said. “This was like going to counseling, but what I’d get maybe in six months or a year, I got in three weeks.

“It brought a lot of healing.”

Ketamine — the only legal psychedelic medication available in Indiana — is giving patients with hard-to-treat depression some hope. Alpha Omega Wellness, a Greenwood-based medical clinic that offers the treatment, had documented improvements for patients almost across the board.

After only two or three weeks, patients exhibited a 75% reduction in the severity of their depression. Many went from severe depression to mild or minimal symptoms over that time.

“It’s my favorite thing that we do. Of all of the services we offer, if we only did this, we’d have such an impact on people’s lives,” said Dr. Dee Bonney, co-founder of Alpha Omega Wellness. “If we had this impact on 20% of the people, that would still be awesome. But it’s for so many more people. It’s not really hit-or-miss; it just hits.”

All of the services offered at Alpha Omega Wellness center around the core mission of individualized care for patients. Bonney, who also worked as an emergency department physician for Franciscan Health Indianapolis, and his wife Megan Bonney, a registered nurse, opened Alpha Omega Wellness in 2019.

Their initial goal was to address the deepening opioid epidemic in central Indiana. At the wellness center, patients can be prescribed medications to help relieve symptoms of withdrawal and to medically treat the way addiction has changed their brain chemistry. At the same time, Alpha Omega uses Christian counseling and group therapy to heal the spiritual void.

The Bonneys continue to offer addiction services as a core of their mission. But they’ve expanded, adding direct primary care to the clinic in 2021. The program works as a health care membership plan that provides care for maladies such as broken bones, cuts, illnesses and wellness visits, all for a fixed monthly price.

Ketamine is one of their newest services.

The drug has been in use since the 1970s as an anesthesia, used frequently with children facing painful procedures. But in recent years, researchers have shown it to be effective in decreasing treatment-resistant depression, or severe depression that has not improved with several other therapies.

According to the National Institute of Health, chronic stress can lead to symptoms of depression, in addition to the loss of communication between brain cells called neurons in the prefrontal cortex area of the brain

Ketamine has been found to help the brain regrow neural connections, giving patients opportunity to develop more positive thoughts and behaviors, according to an article published by Yale Medicine in 2019.

Research published in 2019 in the American Journal of Psychiatry showed meaningful decreases in depression scores for the group given a form of ketamine called esketamine over the group that received a placebo.

“Esketamine is expected to address an unmet medical need in this population through its novel mechanism of action and rapid onset of antidepressant efficacy,” the study’s authors concluded in the journal.

After the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for treatment-resistant depression, some medical providers started offering it. Bonney himself traveled to a facility in southern Indiana for a ketamine infusion in 2020.

“I was really struggling with burnout in the emergency department. So I went there and got a treatment,” he said. “The very first thing I told Megan after I did that treatment was, ‘I want everyone to do this.’ It was very pleasant, I felt good. When I went back to the emergency department, the shifts were still hard, but I had more resilience, I noticed.”

In 2021, Alpha Omega Wellness started offering ketamine infusions to patients suffering from depression.

At the clinic, ketamine is administered intravenously, usually in a slow drip for about 50 minutes. Patients come into one of the clinic’s infusion rooms, settle into comfortable recliners and place a blanket over themselves, if they want. Low lighting and soothing sounds help them relax while the treatment is ongoing.

Almost all of the patients affirmed that the treatments were helping. People who were having trouble even getting out of bed, or had thoughts of suicide, were reporting drastic improvements.

But Bonney wanted a more concrete indication that it was effective. He had the idea to monitor patients’ depression score, measured by a tool called PHQ-9, or the Patient Health Questionnaire.

Patients would answer questions about how often they had little interest in doing things, felt hopeless, felt bad about themselves and other symptoms of depression. Their answers were calculated in a score; the lower the score, the less their depression.

Bonney had patients take the questionnaire before, during and after finishing the six-session ketamine regimen. The results were stark — patients saw a 75% reduction in their depression scores.

“When we started measuring that, and I saw that change, it was dramatically changing people’s lives,” he said. “Before, I’d ask patients how they were doing, and they’d say they felt better and things weren’t bothering them as much. That was great, but then to see the objective data, that supported it.”

Myers had suffered bouts of depression throughout her life, riding the ups and downs of medication, which helped for some time, before the depression came roaring back. But after her youngest son, Cody, died by suicide, her condition worsened.

On top of depression, she experienced post-traumatic stress disorder and extreme anxiety.

“I didn’t like having to get off-and-on anti-depressants. I hated it, in fact,” she said.

Myers, who had been hired to join the staff at Alpha Omega Wellness, learned about their ketamine services. She wanted to learn more, and in November, started treatment.

“I thought it would be a really good thing for me to try,” she said. “So I did, and it has helped immensely.”

One of the most telling examples of the treatment’s benefits came on her son’s birthday in November. Each year on that date, Myers would have to take off work, spending the day crying and overwhelmed with anxiety. She would also gather with family to have dinner.

Myers was on her third treatment when the date fell last year. But her reaction to what normally is an overwhelming day was completely different.

“I woke up that day, knowing that every year we get together for his birthday dinner. We had something planned here at work that night, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to attend that dinner,” she said. “Still, when I woke up, I was totally happy. I went to work, did not cry once all day and wasn’t anxious.”

She has continued to work on the emotional trauma of the past few years, and continues to heal. That is a key part of the treatment’s effectiveness.

“I’m just going deeper and deeper into the healing processes of it. You have to do your part too; it’s not some magical cure forever. It equips you, it gives you strength to make those changes,” she said.

The ketamine regimen consists of six treatments; after those are completed, Bonney stays in contact with patients to monitor their conditions and if they feel like they need a booster. Some of his patients haven’t needed to take another infusion at all, Bonney said.

Ketamine might not be ideal for everyone, Bonney said. But he wants to spread information about the drug’s potential and help them if they want to try it. Alpha Omega Wellness is offering free consultations for people who have questions or want to learn more.

“There’s a ripple effect. If you change somebody’s mental health, you impact so many different areas,” Megan Bonney said.

AT A GLANCE

Ketamine therapy

What: An innovative treatment for people suffering from severe depression. Infusions, given over six different sessions, help the brain regrow connections that may have been lost due to chronic stress. The treatment was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2019.

Where: Alpha Omega Wellness, 1777 W. Stones Crossing Road, Greenwood

More information: alphaomegawellness.com/ketaminetherapy