Ketamine, Trauma, and the Future of Mental Health in Canada

An open-science manuscript examining the neuroscience, ethics, and policy implications of ketamine for trauma care

Chapter 1 — Introduction

Ketamine's emergence and the Canadian mental health landscape. Understanding the limits of existing paradigms and ketamine as an inflection point.

Start with Chapter 1

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Chapter 2 — Neuroscience

Understanding ketamine's rapid modulation of glutamatergic circuits, induction of neuroplasticity, and capacity to reopen emotional flexibility

Read Chapter 2

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Chapter 3 — Trauma in Canada

Examining how trauma disproportionately affects Indigenous communities, survivors of violence, veterans, first responders, and marginalized populations

Read Chapter 3

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Chapter 4 — Ethics & Policy

Exploring questions of autonomy, agency, dissociation, and what a more equitable, evidence-informed mental health system could become

Read Chapter 4

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Open Access

This work is released under CC0 1.0 Universal (Public Domain). It belongs to everyone seeking knowledge about trauma and healing.

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For Everyone

Written for clinicians, policymakers, researchers, and anyone seeking to understand trauma's biology and pathways to recovery.

About This Book

Ketamine, Trauma, and the Future of Mental Health in Canada is an open-science manuscript that examines ketamine through the lenses of neuroscience, ethics, and public policy.

This book does not promote ketamine as a cure. It explores what ketamine's effects reveal about trauma, healing, and the systems that shape access to care.

What You'll Find

Chapter 1: Ketamine's emergence and Canada's mental health landscape
Chapter 2: The neuroscience of ketamine, glutamate, and neuroplasticity
Chapter 3: Trauma as a systems-level problem in Canada
Chapter 4: Ethical dimensions of dissociation, identity, and agency
Chapter 5: Inequities in access shaped by geography, economics, and history
Chapter 6: Policy considerations for modernizing mental health systems
Chapter 7: A vision for evidence-informed, equitable trauma care

Published By

Centre for Trauma-Informed Neuroscience (CTIN)

This work was made possible through the contributions of Dr. Neuroscience GPT, created by Yijang Li.

License

This manuscript is released under CC0 1.0 Universal (Public Domain Dedication). You are free to copy, modify, distribute, and use this work for any purpose, even commercially, without asking permission.

For Clinicians: This book examines how ketamine challenges assumptions about therapeutic timelines and what its mechanisms reveal about trauma's neurobiology.

For Policymakers: It highlights gaps between scientific evidence and regulatory frameworks, and considers what equitable access to emerging treatments requires.

For Those Living With Trauma: It offers insight into the biological substrates of healing and the possibility that suffering need not be permanent.