New treatment for depression could be covered by basic insurance
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A nasal spray based on ketamine should be made available on the basic health insurance package to treat people with depression, the Dutch healthcare institute has advised.
Eketamine has been shown to be effective in combination with other anti-depressants in three out of five recent studies and has been approved by both the European Medicines Agency and its US equivalent, the FDA.
The National Health Care Institute says the drug should always be administered by a doctor because it is potentially addictive and can cause hallucinations at higher doses. It is the first psychedelic drug to be approved for medical use to treat depression.