| The Bay Area nonprofit is launching a first-of-its-kind study into ketamine-assisted psychotherapy for postpartum depression, arguing that current treatments are too expensive, inaccessible, and difficult on nursing mothers. |
| |
| The Deva Collective, a Bay Area nonprofit dedicated to advancing psychedelic medicine for women’s health, recently announced that it will be launching a ketamine-assisted psychotherapy study for women experiencing postpartum depression. They also announced that their active microdosing study for perimenopausal women, called “Attitudes, Opinions and Experiences of Perimenopausal Women Who Microdose San Pedro”, officially received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. Both are major milestones, the organization says, that are part of a broader effort to close the research gap in women’s health. |
| “I’ve been wanting to do the postpartum work for a while … and now we’re at the really beginning stages of putting together the lit review and the IRB proposal,” says Melissa Whippo, a licensed clinical social worker and Deva Colective’s founder. “We have amazing people who want to help us with the study, [including] physicians and researchers.” |
| Postpartum depression affects nearly 1 in 8 women following childbirth, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across the world, that figure jumps to 1 in 5. Despite the prevalence, the National Institutes of Health estimates that up to 50% of cases remain undiagnosed due to stigma and patients’ reluctance to report symptoms. Left untreated, however, the condition can persist for years. A 2022 systematic review found that up to 40% of mothers reported depression one to 12 years after giving birth. |
| Whippo tells DoubleBlind in a phone interview that existing treatment options fall far short of what postpartum patients (read: new mothers) need. Antidepressants, the most common intervention, take upwards of six weeks to take effect, and she said their safety profile for breastfeeding mothers remains understudied. One FDA-approved IV drug, brexanolone, shows efficacy for severe cases but requires a mother to be hospitalized, separated from her newborn, and to cease breastfeeding. |
| “[Brexanolone] costs $30,000,” Whippo says. “It feels so unethical to me that this is what we have to offer new moms who are struggling.” |
| Zulresso, the brand-name version of brexanolone, had a list price of $34,000 for a 60-hour IV treatment — not including hospital costs. It has since been discontinued for a replacement drug called Zurzuvae, which is an oral treatment for postpartum. |
| Whippo says ketamine-assisted therapy delivered intramuscularly in an clinical setting could be a more practical option for new mothers that doesn’t require hospitalization, a six-week window to experience relief, doesn’t cost $34,000, or cessation of breastfeeding. Plus, existing safety data indicate that ketamine levels in breast milk decline rapidly, reaching negligible levels within 12 hours of intramuscular administration. In her clinical practice, Whippo says she’s seen the treatment work. |
| “The postpartum patients who receive ketamine, they don’t need very much,” she said. “The medicine experience tends to be powerful enough that it shifts something, and then the therapy can really work with that shift.” |
| Spravato, an FDA-approved ketamine nasal spray, is currently the most available ketamine treatment and is covered by many insurance providers. But breastfeeding is an explicit contraindication for Spravato due to a lack of safety data on whether it passes into breastmilk. Intramuscular ketamine — which Deva Collective’s study uses — has been studied specifically in lactating women. Existing data show that ketamine in breastmilk declines to negligible levels in half a day’s time after administration, suggesting it may be the more viable route for nursing mothers. (Whippo is a co-author on the study showing that ketamine levels are minimal in a woman’s breastmilk after 12 hours.) |
| Deva Collective is currently developing the IRB proposal for the postpartum study. The primary obstacle, Whippo said, is funding. She explains that those who hold the majority of the capital in the psychedelic space are sought out by many people — everyone working on projects or initiatives — making it difficult to secure necessary fiscal resources. |
| “We need money,” she says. “I’m so tired of asking other women to work for free.” |
| She noted that maternal mental health has struggled to attract donors in the psychedelic research space. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering that even as overall NIH funding has increased nealy 100% over the past decade, research funding specifically for women’s health grew just 11% and accounts for only between 8.8% and 10.8% of the NIH’s total budget, despite women comprising more than half the the U.S. population, according to a 2024 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Without peer-reviewed research looking into ketamine-assisted therapy for postpartum mothers, intramuscular ketamine treatment remains classified as a novel, experimental treatment, giving insurance companies no clinical basis to cover it. That means only people who can pay out of pocket will have access to it. Whippo sees donor investment as the first step toward a future where the treatment will be widely available. |
| “If there’s published evidence-based data, then insurance companies are more likely to reimburse…the research is so important,” Whippo says, “it really does help increase and expand access.” |
| On the perimenopause side, Deva Collective has gathered its first survey responses for its IRB-approved study examining how women who microdose San Pedro cactus describe effects on mood, cognition, and quality of life during the perimenopausal transition. The study, which is among the first of its kind in the U.S., took two years to receive IRB approval, in part because San Pedro contains mescaline, a Schedule I drug. |
| The survey will remain open until September. Women who are currently microdosing San Pedro during perimenopause can and are encouraged to participate. (You can do so here.) |
| “These studies reflect a new paradigm for psychedelic research — one that centers women’s lived experience, safety, and dignity. We are building the clinical and ethical infrastructure needed to ensure these medicines are studied not just for efficacy, but for how they are held, integrated, and woven into real lives.” |
| |
|
|
