You’ve probably taken an SSRI, or know someone who has. Maybe it helped. Maybe it took six weeks to find out it didn’t. And somewhere along the way, you started hearing about ketamine — not as a party drug or a punchline, but as another treatment being used for some people with treatment-resistant depression.

So how is it actually different?

There isn’t a clean answer, because ketamine and traditional antidepressants aren’t really competing for the same job.

LaVeta Jarrett, PMHNP-BC, offers both psychiatric medication management and ketamine-assisted therapy at Embodied Psychiatry in Wichita. Understanding how they differ can make the conversation about your own treatment a lot more useful.

This is the groundwork for that conversation, not a substitute for an individual evaluation.

How Antidepressants Work.

SSRIs work primarily on serotonin. SNRIs work on serotonin and norepinephrine. Both change how much of those chemical messengers remain available in the brain.

They’re commonly used to treat depression and anxiety and can be effective for many people. They’re also usually considered before treatments like ketamine.

One of the harder parts is time. Antidepressants can take several weeks to reach their full effect, and weeks feel very different depending on how bad things already are.

For some people, the first antidepressant doesn’t provide enough relief. Neither does the second. When depression hasn’t responded adequately to multiple treatments, a provider may start talking with you about treatment-resistant depression and other options.

Ketamine may be one of them.

How Ketamine Works.

Ketamine works through a different system in the brain than SSRIs and SNRIs. Instead of primarily affecting serotonin or norepinephrine, it acts on the glutamate system and is associated with neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to form and reorganize connections.

Some people who respond to ketamine notice changes sooner than they did with traditional antidepressants.

Some don’t.

That distinction matters. Ketamine isn’t a guaranteed fast track to feeling better, and not everyone responds to it.

Treatment is structured differently, too. Rather than a medication you take every morning, ketamine is given in scheduled, monitored sessions. At Embodied Psychiatry, ketamine treatment may also include therapeutic preparation and integration as part of the overall treatment plan.

So What’s Exactly Different?

Traditional antidepressants and ketamine work differently, are given differently, and can play different roles in psychiatric care.

Traditional antidepressants are taken regularly and are commonly used as a first-line treatment for depression and anxiety. Ketamine may enter the conversation when depression hasn’t responded adequately to other treatments or when a provider believes there’s a clinical reason to consider another approach.

How quickly someone responds isn’t the only consideration — and faster isn’t automatically better.

Your treatment history matters. So do your symptoms, medical history, current medications, risks, goals, and how you’ve responded to previous care.

That’s why the decision happens in an evaluation, not in a comparison chart.

This Isn’t Either Or…

It’s tempting to treat this like a competition: pick the better treatment and move on.

Psychiatric care usually isn’t that tidy.

For some people, ketamine is considered alongside an existing treatment plan rather than as a replacement for everything that came before it. Medication, therapy, ketamine-assisted treatment, and other approaches can play different roles depending on the person.

The point isn’t to decide which treatment wins. It’s to understand what each one can do, and what makes sense for you.

So Which One is Right For You?

If you’re considering treatment for depression or anxiety, traditional antidepressants are often among the options a provider will discuss first.

Ketamine may enter the conversation when depression hasn’t responded adequately to other treatments. Whether it’s appropriate depends on much more than how many medications you’ve tried.

At Embodied Psychiatry, that starts with an individual evaluation: what you’re experiencing, what you’ve tried, what helped, what didn’t, your medical history, current medications, and what you want from treatment.

Then you talk through the options.

You get to hear the reasoning, the risks, and the trade-offs. You get to ask questions. You get to disagree.