Dr. Ben Yudkoff, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Lumin Health, hosted a Reddit AMA on r/TherapeuticKetamine community on March 6th, 2026\. The below blog post is a recap of one of the questions presented on that AMA, syndicated to the Lumin Health blog in the event that it answers any questions about ketamine therapy, Spravato treatment, or general concerns you may have about treatment.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TherapeuticKetamine/comments/1rj2blv/ama\_im\_dr\_ben\_yudkoff\_psychiatrist\_cofounder/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TherapeuticKetamine/comments/1rj2blv/ama_im_dr_ben_yudkoff_psychiatrist_cofounder/)
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’re interested in learning more about ketamine for depression at Lumin Health. Thank you once again to the moderators and community members for facilitating such an engaging discussion.
Starfox asks:
Usually psychiatrists tend to not like off-label use or using non-approved meds. Why do you think that’s the case and what convinced you that it might be effective without the studies?
Answer from Dr. Ben Yudkoff, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Lumin Health:
Starfox (please tell me that’s a video game reference – haven’t thought about since I was a kid mashing my thumbs on a Super Nintendo controller) please permit to beg to differ\! I think we prescribe meds off label all the time. Lamotrigine augmentation for unipolar depression, gabapentin for anxiety, Lexapro for OCD, almost all medications to treat PTSD, quetiapine for insomnia, etc. – there are a ton of medications we prescribe regularly off label. If there’s reluctance it may generally have to do with how common the off-label use of a medication is or some sense that it may not be likely to be all that effective (changing the perception of the risk:benefit ratio). For me, personally, I was enthusiastic about ketamine when the number of studies that reiterated its benefit were coming out regularly. By 2010 the number of studies coming out affirming the usefulness of ketamine in treating depression were really starting to rise. By 2015 there was enough repeated evidence to suggest that it really had antidepressant effect with a unique mechanism of action. I started spearheading the development of a ketamine practice in 2017 when things looked pretty convincing already.
