Revolutionizing PTSD Treatment for Veterans

 

Unlocking Hidden Potential: The Revolutionary Ketamine Approach to Veteran Mental Health

Welcome to the latest episode of The Transform U! Live Show where we explore groundbreaking solutions to mental health challenges faced by veterans. Hosted by Marcus Hart, this episode features Dr. Sharon Niv, a cognitive psychologist pioneering the use of low-dose ketamine therapy. Discover how this innovative approach can transform mental wellness for veterans dealing with PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

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Explore a comprehensive article on Medium detailing the science behind low-dose ketamine therapy and its benefits for veterans, authored by Marcus Hart. Read the article

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Sharon Niv discusses:

• The scientific breakthroughs behind psycholytic ketamine therapy.
• How this therapy is tailored specifically for veterans.
• Success stories and real-world applications of this treatment.
• How veterans can access this pioneering therapy today.

Join us for a deep dive into how this approach can be a game-changer in veteran mental health care and learn how you can support this initiative.

Connect with Us

Stay involved in the conversation! Follow Marcus Hart on Instagram @marcushart_official for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode to spread awareness.

Transcript

For those who prefer reading, the complete transcript of this episode is available below. Dive into every detail of this enlightening conversation.

Marcus Hart (00:01)

Are you ready to crack the code on mental health and unlock a new level of wellbeing? Well, buckle up because today we're diving deep with a true trailblazer, Dr. Sharon,

Now, some of you may be thinking cognitive psychologist sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but hold on to your space suits because Dr. Nibs using cutting edge science to unlock a secret weapon in the fight against PTSD, depression, and anxiety. And it's specifically designed to help our nation's heroes, veterans like myself.

We venturing into the fascinating world of low dose catamomine treatments and Dr. is here to break it all down for us. So are you ready to explore the frontiers of mental health and empower our veterans to live their best lives? Let's get started. Welcome Dr. Nev to the show. It's an honor to have you here. think I'm very anxious to hear.

so much of what you got to offer because like we got so many cuts and like so many bad takes and bloopers to get to where we are now. So let's cut to the chase. You know, so can you break it down to all of us exactly what this is and how different it is from, you know, what you say, like the ketamine at the dentist office?

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (01:36)

Absolutely. First, thank you so much for having Joyous and myself on here and thank you for doing what you do. So important. Really appreciate you. Love to break down psycholytic ketamine. So people may have heard about ketamine treatment in general. There's been a huge zeitgeist around that in the last 10 years or so. It's really been considered one of the true breakthroughs in mental health. think it was that Yale Medical School said it's the first

true breakthrough we've had since something like Prozac 30 years ago. But most of the ketamine work that we've heard of is much higher dose. The most common setting people experience is going to a clinic where they actually put IV into your veins and you have a really intense experience. And what's seen with those kinds of experiences is that there's an almost immediate relief in symptoms

that can last about a week or two weeks. What we're doing is a very different animal. So that is called psychedelic ketamine treatment. Ketamine is not a classic psychedelic like LSD or mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms, but it does share some of the same experiential qualities that those other psychedelics share, especially at these higher doses.

But at the lower doses, and that's what we're doing, psycholytic means a lower dose of the same psychedelic medicine. At the lower doses, the experience is very, very different, and it's like just a different animal, a different approach to mental health. So I can explain that a bit further. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic as a medicine class. So in these very low doses, what that actually means is this feeling of

almost spaciousness, psychological spaciousness in your body, where suddenly the negative emotions you feel, and this is an interesting point, negative emotions are composed of unpleasant bodily sensations. If you really sit with, what does it mean to be depressed, anxious, to suffer from PTSD, it generally means your body is panicking, your body feels sick, your body feels heavy, anxiety is like an ill, you wanna escape.

And it's understandable that we want to avoid feeling those feelings because they feel terrible. But what that basically does to the person who's struggling with mental health issues is that keeps them stuck. Those emotions want to move through the body. They want to release. And we resist them because it feels terrible. And so they don't really release. We get stuck in these patterns. What ketamine, especially if these low doses, provides is the opportunity

to have significant spaciousness in your body in which you can start to build a very different relationship with your negative emotions, allowing them to sort of release and resolve on their own. So what Joyous does, completely different from any other ketamine telehealth service that's available, is to prescribe these very low doses that you take quite regularly. At the beginning, it's a daily protocol where people have

about an hour a day, somewhere between 30 and 60, it really varies, every brain is different, of this feeling of spaciousness. And so people have the time, what we ask is set an intention and be with that. You can listen to a meditation, we provide some content that we believe is especially well suited to the state. But if you have your own practice, if you have a journaling practice, if you have your own chanting, whatever it is that you like to do, is gonna get enhanced in the state.

because your body is, it's primed, it's primed to build a new relationship with your emotions. And because ketamine is what's known as a very neuroplastic agent, it also, it prompts a lot of changes in your brain. So what you do with this time really matters. So there's a lot more I can say about that, but that's the beginning. What more would we talk about?

Marcus Hart (05:10)

you

Mm-hmm.

This is so fascinating. It's almost like a gentle nudge towards healing, not a rocket ride to party time, which is what I appreciate most. That makes a lot of sense. Now, why veterans specifically, do they face unique challenges when it comes to mental health? And one key word that you brought up was neuro-collective plasticity, which is very, very important when it comes to PTSD.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (05:41)

and swap.

That's it.

So just as a plug, just to get it out of the way, because it's important, in the next 13 days, any veteran that signs up before January 1st gets the subscription service at Joyous for $99 a month. So I hope people are listening and hoping to give it a try. Even without that, it's one of our values is to be affordable and accessible. So it's $129 regularly. But right now, we're really hoping to give this gift to veterans before the new year.

Marcus Hart (06:26)

Thanks.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (06:28)

In terms of unique challenges for veterans, there really are many, right? There's the stigma. And one way that we're thinking about the stigma is the privacy of telehealth in your own home, on your own Zoom. And to take this, you don't have to go into a clinic. You don't have to necessarily have anyone else involved. This is a safe and very gentle experience that you can have on your own. So there's that. There's the stigma.

There's the accessibility piece, both geographically, we're active in 29 states, and in terms of wait times, for the most part, people are able to get an appointment with our providers more or less right off the bat. Within a couple of days, the medicine is shipped straight to your home, so that can really address many of the accessibility issues as well. And then there's really this piece about the intensity of, well, we can start with.

one other one, which is that there's a limited effectiveness to the more traditional medicines. For some people, SSRIs work great, but not for everybody. And so this is a very different molecule that oftentimes people will say feels like it's getting to the root of the issue through that neuroplastic property that we talked about and through the fact that they suddenly have the psychological space in which to really

build a new relationship with what's been going on with old memories, with negative emotions that are typically too overwhelming. So just it's a new approach that might work better for some people. And then the last thing I wanted to say is comparing, so that's comparison to traditional SSRIs, Prozac, a comparison to higher dose psychedelics. Those can be extremely transformative. We are absolutely not here to say anything negative about the psychedelic experience. It's just that

Marcus Hart (08:09)

Yeah.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (08:09)

the psycholytic

experience, the go low and go slow approach, the gentle approach, the deliberate approach, the skill building approach is right for different people. And they may not even contradict. Maybe someone does both. But this particular approach of touching in regularly, skill building, is in learning how to work with these emotions. And it doesn't always end up being an act of a process. It can happen quite a...

Marcus Hart (08:21)

Thank you.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (08:36)

spontaneously that as you have the space to handle the emotions, they just begin to processing on their own. And those pathways of a healthier relationship with your emotions, with your memories, with your experience, begin getting laid down as new neural pathways, new super highways in the brain.

Marcus Hart (08:38)

Mm-hmm.

We really love it and what you describe it like we just skill-building it. I think that's incredible. It's clear that our veterans especially need all the support we can give them. So how does a joyous PBC fit into the picture?

Can you tell us about the program you designed specifically for veterans? think you kind of touched on it little bit, but let's dive deeper into it.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (09:24)

Yeah, absolutely. So first, just PBC, if people are not aware, stands for Public Benefits Corporation. And what that essentially means, it's a signal sent to any potential shareholders in our future. Right now, we're a private company, but it states that we are mission driven over profit driven. And so that's just an important thing to understand about the company. We're really here with the aim of increasing joy.

giving people the capacity to live in a new way. The way the program works, it is a monthly subscription. People come in, they have to make sure that they're qualified because this is telehealth, so we want to be extremely careful about ruling out any contraindications, both in terms of medically speaking, for example, uncontrolled high blood pressure.

is not necessarily safe to do with ketamine or a history of psychosis not safe to do with ketamine. So we want to make sure that people are coming in who are appropriate for the treatment. They do fill in a very expensive intake and then they have a telehealth appointment, like a video call, a live video call with one of our medical providers. They get their questions answered. They discuss what the treatment is like.

And if everyone agrees this is a good idea, this is a good fit, then the medicine does arrive at their home. It should be said that up to that point, they don't have to pay. If they just want to come in and talk to the provider and learn more, completely free. We want people to at least learn about the treatment and decide for themselves, is there something that feels right for me? At the point that the medicine arrives, we work together with the patient using daily questionnaires that look at symptoms.

at side effects, at sleep patterns, mood patterns, other factors to make decisions about what is the right dose, how often they should be taking that dose. Like we can advise a person, for example, with high anxiety to take their total dose of the day and split it throughout the day. Let's see your dose is 80 milligrams a day. We may tell you split it into 20 milligrams and take that every couple of hours and that will help you maintain a steadier state until you're.

ready to consolidate that dose, right? So we can get very precise with how we think is best for you to take the medicine. At the same time, the patient is at the center. So if they tell us, actually, that doesn't sound right to me, that's definitely something that's taken into consideration in our recommendations. And then in addition to that, they are invited to participate in our online community where they can speak with other patients. And we're working on courses that

are specifically suited to the psycholytic state and to the needs of our patients. So the very first one is all about nervous system regulation, breathing, toning, using your voice to create pleasant vibrational sensations in the body that end up really soothing the system. From there on, we're moving on to other modalities that we think are best suited to this particular medicine and what it can provide. That's kind of what the program looks like.

Patients meet with their providers about two to three weeks after their first appointment to check in, how's it going, how does the dose feel, and then after that they meet up with their provider. First of all, they're invited to whenever they want, no extra cost, but they are required to meet with their provider at least every two to three months, depends on the state that they're in. In order to receive their refills, in order to...

Marcus Hart (12:39)

Come.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (12:50)

continue to meet with their providers, they do need to fill out those check-ins because safety is our highest priority. We want to make sure this is working for you and we want to make sure that it's working for you safely. So that is the program in a nutshell. Happy to answer any more questions about that.

Marcus Hart (12:56)

Yeah.

And I love that. I love the fact that you offer inventions of sex face to confront their inner struggles and find truth and find essentially some lasting healing. And here's the beauty of it too. Science is backing you up. Can you share some success stories or research findings that demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach?

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (13:28)

Yeah, absolutely. ketamine on its own has been found to be one of the most rapid antidepressant medications that exists, especially in terms of anything like suicidality is almost immediately reversed for a time being. With repeated administrations of even these higher doses, there are longer and longer enduring differences. Now we're working on our own to publish

Marcus Hart (13:51)

Okay.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (13:53)

our data. We've now treated over 60,000 patients. We've had three million, you know, because they have to respond to these surveys regularly. We've had over three million surveys and each one of those has like 12 to 50 data points. So we have a lot of really compelling data that we're working on publishing that really demonstrates how enduring the symptom relief really is. But then what's more interesting than that?

Marcus Hart (13:57)

Nice.

Wow.

Peace.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (14:20)

to me at least is the interview data that we're collecting with our patients. We're hearing qualitatively what this means for them. The fact that they're saying things like, feel like it's water off a duck's back. The things that used to bother me don't bother me anymore. I'm able to see them as though from a different perspective. I feel like I'm a bigger, I'm a big room and my anxiety is happening like a little thing inside of me and I can kind of work with it more directly.

Yeah, it is pretty impressive. We have also worked directly with therapists who then encourage their patients to bring their medicine into the therapy session. That was a pilot that we ran and that was spectacular. We heard things like on my own, I work to build positive emotionality. I meditate. I appreciate nature. I journal with my therapist.

I dig into the deep and heavy stuff that's really laying into me. And we think that's actually the, that's the correct approach. We want to make sure that we're directing people into their, you know, the depth of their pain if they're on their own and they're not necessarily supported. So that's not what any of our programming is about. It's never about let's dig into your trauma. It's more about positive emotionality, nervous system repair, self-compassion, you know, building a positive relationship with different parts of your

Marcus Hart (15:22)

Yeah.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (15:43)

of your experience and your personality and never really about going into the depth. But we are developing a program to collaborate and teach therapists how to work directly with this. We've already collaborated with Heroic Hearts. We have many discussions with the VA. We really hope to be able to bring a big population of aware, trained therapists who would be able to work with veterans issues.

in the most skilled possible way to understand how this medicine can play a role.

Marcus Hart (16:14)

This is truly groundbreaking and you you definitely a rock star Dr. Neve. We're gonna take a quick break everyone. We'll be right back with our rock star in just a minute to discuss how you can take action and support this incredible initiative for our veterans.

Marcus Hart (16:37)

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Marcus Hart (17:40)

Hey, welcome back everyone. We have the incredible and wonderful Dr. Hianford with us today. This has been very informative today and I'm just thrilled. I'm just thrilled about like, you know, what I'm hearing here and what it can do to help a lot of you guys out there. So let's shift gears and talk about what listeners can do to help. How can they raise awareness about this groundbreaking work and support veteran mental health initiatives when it comes to psycholactic?

Academy.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (18:09)

I mean, in my perspective, it's all about reducing the stigma, which I see happening all over the place already, but more and more to speak without shame about the difficult experiences that people have gone through, the pain that endures. are human beings and we are affected by the experiences that we've had. And there is such shame around that. It is heartbreaking.

Marcus Hart (18:15)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (18:31)

And the more we're able to speak with openness and openheartedness and compassion for ourselves and for one another and to say, this treatment really helped me and here's how it helped me and here's why it helped me to raise that awareness is just such an important piece. I know in our end, creating content that is specialized for particular groups, for particular experiences is going to be part of it too. Again, as I said, without plunging people into depths of

pain that they may not want to handle on their own, but to be able to validate the experiences and to offer that piece of self-love and self-compassion around seeking help. It is a courageous thing to treat oneself.

to want to develop a new relationship with one's past experiences. It's a beautiful and courageous thing and the more conversations we have about this, the better off we will all be. And the more respect and the more compassion we will have for one another.

Marcus Hart (19:29)

amen. You really like said some very inspiring things there. And this conversation, Dr. Sharon, has been like very inspiring for myself. And you're offering a beacon of hope to veterans who struggling with the 12 issues. And I thank you for sharing your expertise and passion with our audience today. Now, before you go, you know, what's the single most important takeaway you want listeners to remember from this episode?

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (19:54)

think I would like them to remember that this is a completely different approach that's gentle, that's going low and going slow. It's about slowly, comfortably and safely developing a new relationship with your internal experience, bit by bit, digestibly, and in a way that you can return to.

Marcus Hart (20:08)

Mm-hmm.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (20:13)

Our hope is not to have people on this medicine forever for the rest of their lives, but to use it as a reset, as a neuroplastic reset to lay down new mental habits of relating to their emotional experience. And hey, life comes back, right? Life will come back at you. You are always able to come back and do another reset. So that is the, that's the.

mental model I'd love for people to think of when they think of the low dose approach. Yeah.

Marcus Hart (20:39)

Thanks.

Beautiful, beautiful. Is there a website or a way that we can find out more and dive deeper?

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (20:49)

Yes, believe

it's joyous.team and I believe it's joyous.team slash veterans, but I'm just checking that. it veteran? It's joyous.team. And let me see if there is. Is it care.joyous.team? We may have to redo this piece here. there it is. Joyous for veterans. Care.joyous.team slash joyous for veterans. We're going to probably have to.

Marcus Hart (21:06)

Okay.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (21:16)

It's a little too long to memorize. We'll probably have to have it in the video notes, but.

Marcus Hart (21:18)

You know, we

definitely have that link in the video notes for all of you guys to take part in that and, you know, rather than just getting to treating yourself. I'm curious myself and like, you know, investing in this and, you know, seeing how it's going to work for myself. You know, as I love to like, you know, invite more alternate ways of like, exploring my own healing journey. And there's a lot of you guys who are just like me. So.

Let's continue to support these efforts and whatever we need to do to like continue to support you Sharon. We're definitely here for you and we really appreciate you today.

Sharon Niv, Ph.D. (21:57)

Marcus, thank you so much for what you're doing and for having us on here.

Marcus Hart (22:00)

And to all of you

out there, thank you. And to all of you out there, make sure you like, subscribe, and continue the conversation in the comment section of this particular episode. Do share this with someone who you know will benefit from it. And even if you don't know if they will benefit from it, it's always good to get more hands on deck. Until next time, I'm Marcus. Many blessings, peace, and lots of love.