19th/03/2025

King Faisal Hospital officially launches psychiatric treatment using the drug Ketamine, which is administered to patients with severe depression, high-level trauma, and others who have failed to respond to conventional treatments.

Since its inception in May 2024, the clinic has provided care to 23 patients, offering them new hope through this evidence-based treatment. Ketamine therapy is unique because it works differently from traditional antidepressants. While most medications take weeks to show results, ketamine can relieve symptoms within hours or days. It does this by stimulating new connections between brain cells, essentially “rewiring” areas of the brain that have been affected by long-term stress, trauma, or depression. Ketamine also helps regulate glutamate, a key chemical that influences mood, emotions, and thought patterns, allowing patients to break free from the cycle of persistent distress.

Ketamine is commonly used to induce anesthesia and sedation, but medical experts have shown that it can be used in the treatment of mental illnesses, showing changes in the patient after a few hours, while it usually takes much longer.

Through a partnership between King Faisal Hospital and the Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute in San Diego, California, United States, psychiatrists and nurses have trained Faisal Hospital staff in the use of this treatment and will continue to provide supervision and treatment.

The state minister in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Yvan Butera, said that this treatment will complement the existing one but has the speciality of treating those who have not had other medicines that could help them recover.

He said, “Due to the history we have gone through, there are a number of Rwandans who still suffer from extreme sadness and depression, or even normal life, but the medicines that were already available did not help them. This is a new treatment in Rwanda and in the world in general. We took it at the beginning to help Rwandans who need this treatment to get it and we hope that it will yield tangible results.”

Dr. Yvan Butera urged those facing mental health issues to come forward and talk about their problems and to access these services to treat these illnesses because hiding them makes them worse and can even lead to illness or death.

The Chief Medical Officer at King Faisal Hospital, Dr. Sendegeya Augustin, said that some patients were given conventional medications to treat mental illnesses but they did not feel better, and then they were thinking about finding new ways to help them.

He said, “It is a treatment for mental illnesses, you know that people have very different problems such as severe depression, and you find that someone has thoughts of suicide, we give them medications but they do not heal.”

He continued, “We came to know that there is a drug that is used to induce paralysis and put patients to sleep, but when used in small doses it can help those patients with serious problems that have not been cured by conventional medications, we came to find that the Ketamine drug helps, so that is when we decided to start using it.”

So far, since this program began in May 2024, it has helped 23 patients, and the evaluation conducted by these hospitals has shown that they are gradually showing hope for a good recovery.

Statistics from the  RBC, for 2022/2023, showed that throughout the country at that time, about 3305 people were diagnosed with mental health problems every month.