First ketamine-assisted psychotherapy Bristol clinic opens

Patients will be given the drug alongside talking therapy sessions

The UK's first ketamine-assisted psychotherapy clinic has been opened.

The Bristol clinic says it may offer improvements to treatment-resistant patients suffering with addiction and mental health conditions.

Awakn Clinic will charge people £6,000 for a course of low-dose treatments alongside talking therapy.

But health experts have said it is expensive and more research needs to be done to know if using the drug in this way is effective.

Ketamine is a class B drug, is illegal to use recreationally and is used in medicine as an anaesthetic.

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Dr Tim Williams said the UK has been "slow to adopt" similar treatments.

He said: "But we also need to have better evidence and better research to prove these disorders can be effectively treated with the drug.

"Ideally with greater evidence and more clinics opening that overall unit cost will come down."

Dr Ben Sessa (third from left) is looking to use MDMA and psilocybin in treatments in the future

Awakn Clinic lead Dr Ben Sessa said he wants to harness the "unique mental state" he claims the drug can induce.

He said: "This is the endpoint of 15 years of work in this field working in academic studies and research.

"We are both approved and trained psilocybin therapists so we are going to use that training."

The therapy will treat people with depression and anxiety disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.

'New paradigm'

Professor David Nutt, scientific advisor to the clinic, said: "Psychedelics are ushering a whole new paradigm for psychiatry with other countries moving very fast and we don't want to be left behind.

"Current psychiatric treatments are not adequate for a significant proportion of patients."

But, Bristol Psychedelic society coordinator Rhodri Karim warned a clinical medical setting may not be the best place for a patent to "achieve healing" whilst using psychedelic substances.

They said: "The medical context shouldn't be assumed as the best.

"There are plenty of contexts in other cultures where psychoactive medicines are used that are not medical and it begs the question as to whether medicine is the best places to be administering these treatments."

Mr Karim said: 'We are seeing a big transformation for the perception of these substances that are seen as party drugs'

Because ketamine is licensed to be used by doctors as an anaesthetic it can be prescribed off licence for depression. This is happening in private clinics in the US and the UK.

In the UK, doctors have been trialling ketamine to treat depression since 2011.

Dr Rupert McShane, who has led a trial in Oxford, said ketamine can work on patients with depression "where nothing has helped before".

Last year, he called for the use of ketamine to treat depression to be rolled out.

However, he called for a national registry to monitor its use.