Ketamine Infusion for Social Anxiety Disorder

* Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is common and causes significant impairment. * First-line treatments for Social Anxiety Disorder are only partially effective. Many SAD patients experience little or inadequate symptom relief with available treatments. * Ketamine is a potent NMDA receptor antagonist. Ketamine represents an agent with a potentially novel mechanism of action for the treatment of anxiety disorders. * Ketamine has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of psychiatric disorders closely related to Social Anxiety Disorder including Major Depression, Bipolar Depression and possibly Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Ketamine represents the possibility to provide rapid symptom relief to patients with SAD and may provide the mechanism for future drug development to treat SAD more rapidly and effectively.