What is KAP?

A Different Approach to Healing and Emotional Well-being

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we find ourselves feeling stuck in familiar patterns of thinking, feeling, or responding to life's challenges. Traditional therapy and medication can be incredibly helpful, but for some individuals, these approaches may not provide the relief or progress they are seeking.

Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) offers a different approach by combining the potential benefits of ketamine with the support and guidance of psychotherapy. Ketamine works differently from traditional antidepressants. It affects the brain's glutamate system and may promote neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to form new connections and adapt to change.

During treatment, ketamine can create a temporary shift in awareness that may help you step outside familiar thought patterns, experience greater emotional openness, and consider personal challenges from a different perspective.

When combined with psychotherapy, these experiences can become opportunities for deeper self-understanding, emotional processing, and meaningful personal growth.

Why Combine Ketamine With Psychotheraphy?

Ketamine alone may provide meaningful relief from depressive symptoms, sometimes more rapidly than traditional antidepressant medications. But symptom relief and emotional healing aren't always the same thing.

While ketamine may temporarily create greater flexibility in how we think and feel, psychotherapy gives you an opportunity to explore those changes and understand how they connect to the challenges you experience in daily life.

Combining ketamine with psychotherapy is intended to support both the biological and psychological aspects of healing.

Psychotherapy may help you:

Explore emotions more openly: Create space to understand feelings and experiences that may have been difficult to approach.
Recognize unhelpful patterns: Become more aware of beliefs, behaviors, and emotional responses that may be keeping you feeling stuck.
Develop new perspectives: Explore different ways of understanding yourself, your relationships, and past experiences.
Strengthen emotional resilience: Build practical skills for navigating stress, difficult emotions, and life's challenges.
Create meaningful change: Explore how insights from your ketamine experience might translate into healthier choices, behaviors, and relationships.

Research on the added benefits of psychotherapy alongside ketamine is still developing. Although the combination is promising, it hasn't yet been established that adding psychotherapy consistently improves ketamine treatment outcomes compared with medication alone.

Our KAP approach provides a structured, supportive process that keeps your personal goals, emotional well-being, and therapeutic growth at the center of treatment.

Two Ways to Experience Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

We offer two approaches to incorporating psychotherapy into ketamine treatment. Both provide individualized therapeutic support, with the flexibility to meet you where you are in your treatment journey.

1️⃣Individual In-Office Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

We collaborate with an independent medical prescriber who evaluates clients and, when appropriate, prescribes ketamine troches (lozenges) for use during individual psychotherapy sessions in our office.

This approach allows you to experience ketamine in a private, comfortable, and supportive therapeutic setting, with your therapist present throughout the medicine session. Your treatment includes preparation, medicine sessions, and integration, providing continuity and personalized support from beginning to end.

2️⃣Preparation and Integration for IV Ketamine and Spravato Treatments

If you're receiving IV ketamine infusions or Spravato (esketamine) treatments at an outside medical clinic, we offer individual preparation and integration psychotherapy to complement your medical care.

These sessions help you feel more emotionally prepared for treatment, explore experiences or insights that may emerge, and consider how to incorporate meaningful changes into your everyday life.

Whether you receive ketamine in our office or through an outside medical provider, our focus is on creating a compassionate, individualized therapeutic experience that supports your emotional well-being and personal growth.

What Does KAP Treatment Look Like?

Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy is more than a medication session. It's a collaborative process designed to support you before, during, and after your ketamine experience, as appropriate to your treatment setting.

The process includes three important phases: preparation, medicine sessions, and integration.

1️⃣Preparation: Creating a Foundation for Healing

Before beginning ketamine treatment, we take time to understand your experiences, explore what brings you to therapy, and identify what you hope to gain from treatment.

Preparation sessions give us an opportunity to discuss your personal history, current challenges, and therapeutic goals. We'll also talk about what you might experience during ketamine treatment, address questions or concerns, and develop strategies to help you feel comfortable and supported.

Together, we'll establish intentions for treatment while remaining open to whatever may emerge during the experience.

The goal of preparation is to help you approach treatment feeling informed, supported, and emotionally prepared.

Medical eligibility and safety are evaluated by the prescribing medical provider. This evaluation is a separate cost.

2️⃣Medicine Sessions: Creating Space for New Perspectives

For our in-office KAP services, ketamine is prescribed by an independent medical provider and taken in the form of oral troches (lozenges) during scheduled individual sessions. Your therapist remains present to provide emotional support in a calm, comfortable environment, with medical oversight and safety procedures coordinated with the prescribing provider.

Ketamine can temporarily change how we experience thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Some people describe feeling deeply relaxed, less connected to everyday worries, or more able to observe difficult experiences without their usual emotional intensity.

Others may experience vivid imagery, meaningful memories, or a greater sense of connection with themselves.

Every person's experience is different. There's no particular feeling, insight, or emotional response that you need to have for your session to be worthwhile.

Depending on your needs and the treatment approach, your therapist may offer quiet, supportive presence or gentle therapeutic conversation when appropriate.

The purpose isn't to force a breakthrough. It's to provide a supportive environment where new perspectives and emotional experiences have room to emerge naturally.

If you're receiving IV ketamine or Spravato, your medicine sessions take place at your treating medical clinic. Our practice provides preparation and integration psychotherapy around those treatments.

3️⃣Integration: Turning Insight Into Lasting Change

Integration is an important part of Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy.

Ketamine may create opportunities for new insights and emotional openness, but meaningful change often develops through how we understand and apply those experiences in everyday life.

During integration sessions, we'll explore what emerged during your ketamine experience and how it may connect to your relationships, emotional patterns, personal beliefs, and treatment goals.

You might work through difficult emotions, recognize longstanding patterns, develop healthier coping strategies, or identify changes you'd like to make in your life.

Integration helps you move beyond the experience itself and explore how new insights can support meaningful growth and lasting behavioral change.

Understanding the Different Forms of Ketamine Treatment

Ketamine can be administered in several ways, including oral lozenges, intravenous infusions, and nasal sprays. Each method differs in how the medication is absorbed, how treatment is delivered, and what medical supervision is required.

Oral Ketamine Troches (Lozenges)

Ketamine troches are compounded lozenges that dissolve in the mouth. Medication is absorbed through the tissues of the mouth, and some may also be swallowed.

This approach eliminates the need for IV access and allows clients to participate in individual medicine sessions in our psychotherapy office when medically appropriate.

Absorption and individual experiences can vary. Compounded ketamine troches are prescribed off-label and are not FDA-approved for psychiatric treatment.

IV Ketamine

IV ketamine is administered directly into the bloodstream through an intravenous infusion at a medical clinic. This allows the medical provider to carefully control the amount and rate of medication delivered.

IV administration offers predictable absorption and may produce more consistent medication exposure. Infusions commonly last approximately 40 minutes, followed by monitoring and recovery.

If you're receiving IV ketamine through an outside medical provider, we can provide preparation and integration psychotherapy to support your treatment.

Spravato (Esketamine) Nasal Spray

Spravato is an FDA-approved nasal medication for certain depressive conditions. It is administered in a certified healthcare setting, where clients remain under observation for at least two hours following treatment.

Spravato differs from compounded intranasal ketamine, which is not FDA-approved for psychiatric treatment.

We provide preparation and integration psychotherapy for individuals receiving Spravato at outside medical clinics.

Is Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Right for You?

KAP may be an option if you're experiencing depression, including treatment-resistant depression. It may also be considered in selected circumstances for other mental health concerns.

You might be interested in KAP if you feel you've reached a plateau in traditional therapy, haven't experienced the relief you'd hoped for, or would like to explore your emotional experiences through a different therapeutic approach.

Ketamine isn't appropriate for everyone. Treatment begins with careful consideration of your mental health history, medical needs, and personal goals. Some uses of ketamine for mental health conditions are off-label, and results vary from person to person.

A Collaborative Approach to Healing

At the heart of Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy is the understanding that meaningful change can involve more than reducing symptoms.

Our approach emphasizes a compassionate, supportive therapeutic environment where you can explore your experiences, develop greater self-understanding, and discover new ways of moving forward.

By combining the potential therapeutic effects of ketamine with intentional preparation and thoughtful integration, KAP offers another way to approach healing and personal growth.

Healing isn't always about changing who you are. Sometimes, it begins with discovering new ways to understand yourself.

Interested in Learning More?

If you're curious about Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy and whether it might be a good fit for your needs, we welcome the opportunity to answer your questions, explain the process, and explore your treatment options.

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