Family Counseling and Trauma Healing Center combines Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing to speed up recovery | News | San Luis Obispo

Some patients experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns can unlock deep healing with a combination of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

Several local clinics and therapists offer either EMDR and/or KAP therapies, including Ami Grace in San Luis Obispo, a holistic psychotherapist, who offers both together “depending on treatment goals,” according to her website, amigrace.com.

The Family Counseling and Trauma Healing Center in Solvang offers these services to eligible patients, hoping to foster profound emotional processing and resilience. According to Beverly Taylor, the center’s founder and certified trauma specialist, KAP incorporates low doses of ketamine during psychotherapy sessions, while EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help patients reframe distressing memories, reduce emotional distress, and promote adaptive healing.

“I’ve never had it not happen, where they get to the other side and then they can take the positive cognition and put it over the disturbing initial memory and they get a different perspective of it,” Taylor said.

During a typical EMDR session, a patient will hold pulsers that go back and forth while they describe their struggles and tell their stories. Taylor explained that EMDR is effective even without ketamine because it helps the body enter a “theta state of relaxation.”

“EMDR creates that state where their whole system calms down,” Taylor said. “It’s a deep, restful state, and they can look at and address hard issues without having to go into them and re-experience them or be re-traumatized. They have just enough distance from it to be able to observe it.”

When combined with KAP, Taylor noted that patients are better able to fully let go and immerse themselves in the healing experience. She added that ketamine helps patients’ egos take a step back during the therapy session.

“We all have a protector self, and when we’re doing traditional therapy, sometimes that part kind of stops us from being able to go deeper,” Taylor said. “It tells us, ‘Oh, we’re being silly,’ or ‘Oh, I shouldn’t do this in front of somebody.’ The ketamine helps that kind of step aside.”

Before a client can undergo KAP treatments, they must first be thoroughly screened to determine their eligibility. Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Samantha Lau performs these screenings to help Taylor determine if off-label ketamine treatment is the right fit for certain patients.

According to Lau, some factors that might exclude someone from being able to participate in KAP treatments include untreated hypertension, a history of psychosis, schizophrenia diagnosis, and active addictions to other drugs. Another key component to understanding if KAP would work well for someone is to determine how they view the treatment.

“I dig into their psychiatric history to get to know if they are ready for this kind of work,” Lau explained. “It’s deep work, and, you know, wanting a magic cure is not a good sign.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ketamine to be used as an anesthetic in 1970, and since then, several studies have shown that it might also be effective in different doses for treating certain mental health conditions. One study published in the National Library of Medicine found that depressed patients showed a significant improvement in symptoms after the use of ketamine over two test days.

“When you really look at the evidence, there are studies that are very compelling, but there’s not an FDA-approved study,” Lau said. “It didn’t go through the FDA research process.”

Despite the many studies suggesting the benefits of using ketamine to treat conditions like depression, the FDA does not consider the drug “safe and effective for such uses.” In a warning issued to patients and health care providers about the potential risks associated with ketamine products, the FDA wrote that safety concerns associated with its use include “abuse and misuse, psychiatric events, increases in blood pressure, respiratory depression (slowed breathing), and lower-urinary-tract and bladder symptoms.”

In October 2023, famous Friends actor Matthew Perry died from a ketamine overdose, sparking heated debates over the safety of the drug to treat mental health conditions.

Taylor said she recognized why events like this might make some patients wary of using ketamine for their treatments, but she emphasized that, unlike Perry, patients will be on extremely low doses and will be monitored during their sessions.

“If it feels scary for somebody in too big of a way, we’re not going to do it,” Taylor told New Times. “They’re not going to be a good candidate because they’re going to go into it feeling scared.”

Before the center started offering KAP, Taylor tried the treatment herself, noting that she wouldn’t urge patients to do anything she hadn’t done herself. During her treatment, which happened soon after the death of someone close to her, she explored the complex feelings of loss.

“I just felt way more in balance, like my system wasn’t trying to set the feelings aside or shove it off,” Taylor said. “I was just able to feel it, move it through, and have a lot of peace around it.” Δ

Staff Writer Emma Montalbano can be reached at [email protected].