Our Advantage

9 Reasons why Kadima is the place you should turn to

1. EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE

Kadima’s founder, Dr. Feifel has been at the forefront of advancing treatment for mental illness for the past 20 years. He has been providing advanced treatments such as ketamine, and TMS longer than any other provider in San Diego and established the world’s first ketamine infusion clinic in 2008 while at UCSD. With over 135 peer-reviewed publications on the topic, he is a recognized authority on advanced treatments for mental illness. (Read about Dr. Feifel’s expertise).

That expertise and experience is baked into the DNA of Kadima’s approach to treating challenging conditions. If you are looking for a more effective approach to treat your depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc., it goes without saying that you want a place with the greatest experience and expertise. You want Kadima!

2. WE OFFER PERSONALIZED, NOT COOKIE-CUTTER TREATMENT

Each patient considering treatment at Kadima is seen for an initial consultation by Dr. David Feifel, who is an internationally recognized expert and thought leader in ketamine treatment and TMS. At the end of the consultation, Dr Feifel will explain the treatment options available, make recommendations, and answer questions.

Personalized care continues from there. For example, unlike many clinics offering ketamine where the treatment is provided by a non-physician. at Kadima each patient meets with a therapists trained in ketamine assisted psychotherapy before their first ketamine treatment to prepare them and help them optimize the therapeutic benefits.

Patients also have opportunities to have “integration” sessions with a therapist between treatments. On the days of treatment, every patient meets with a ketamine-expert, physician before and after their ketamine session to review results and refine the plan for the next treatment.

3. YOU WILL BE CLOSELY MONITORED BY HIGHLY QUALIFIED PHYSICIANS

Our physicians have decades of training and experience in their fields and are Board Certified in their various specialities and subspecialties, which include General Psychiatry, Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry, Psychopharmacology, Psychosomatic Medicine, Psychedelic Therapy and Research, Neurobiology Research, Geriatric Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry, and Anesthesiology.

Each patient considering treatment at Kadima is seen for an initial consult by Dr. David Feifel, who is an internationally-recognized expert and thought leader in ketamine treatment and TMS.

At the end of the consult, Dr Feifel will explain the treatment options available, make recommendations, and answer questions.

Patients who are undergoing a course of ketamine or Spravato (esketamine) treatments at Kadima receive close monitoring by a physician, in contrast to the cursory monitoring and follow-up done in some other clinics.

They are seen before each treatment by a physician who reviews how their last treatment experience went both in the clinic and afterward, how they have been feeling and functioning since that treatment, and any side effects they may have had from the treatment.

Based on that, the physician works together with the patient to individualize the treatment and to determine the best dose for the patient for that day.

In addition, each patient is seen again by the physician at the end of each treatment for a debriefing, during which the doctor asks how the treatment went, what their experiences were during the treatment, and whether there were any side effects. The doctor then will make a recommendation about when the patient should return for their next treatment.

Unlike some other clinics, we do not use “mid-level” health professionals such as Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners as a substitute for physicians, because we believe that the challenging illnesses our patients come to us with need to be treated by the most experienced and highly-qualified health professionals.

4. MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM APPROACH

At Kadima you won’t have a medical provider, you will have a treatment team with diverse expertise and skills! Kadima’s clinical team includes a board-certified psychiatrist, addiction psychiatrist, neuropsychiatrist, anesthesiologists, licensed nurses, licensed psychotherapists. Our physicians have decades of

training and experience in their respective specialties. Our therapists all have extensive training and experience in psychedelic assisted therapy as well as other special skills such as EMDR and somatic release therapy.

5. WE ARE CARING, NOT CORPORATE

We were founded in 2017 by Dr. David Feifel. After years of experience as a Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego taking care of patients with treatment-resistant psychiatric illnesses, he had a vision of creating a clinic that would offer the latest cutting-edge treatments to those patients in a warm, caring environment, free of the institutionalized bureaucracy often found in large healthcare settings. Everyone who works at Kadima remains dedicated to that mission.

We get to know our patients well, and many of them have told us that when they come to the clinic they feel they are greeted and cared for as if they were family. You are not just a number here!

Unlike some other clinics offering ketamine and TMS, we are not a franchise backed by venture capital investors whose main goals are to open as many locations as possible in order to make as much money as possible.

6. YOU WILL RECEIVE COMPASSIONATE, EXPERIENCED NURSING CARE

We are fortunate to have a staff of excellent, compassionate, highly trained, and skilled Licensed and Registered Nurses who are enthusiastic and committed to our mission of helping patients who have not responded to the usual treatments for their illnesses.

They are very experienced in administering the ketamine and Spravato treatments, monitoring and assessing the patient during their treatment, communicating with the doctor, and providing the emotional support, grounding, and comfort care the patient needs.

7. WE ARE MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS WHO UNDERSTAND PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS

Many ketamine clinics nowadays are run by anesthesiologists or emergency medicine physicians who have no formal mental health training or experience and little understanding of the mental health disorders that they are treating with ketamine.

In contrast, our clinic is founded and run by psychiatrists with deep experience treating mental disorders, and we also work closely with licensed psychotherapists, such as psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and marriage and family therapists.

8. WE HELP YOU UTILIZE YOUR KETAMINE AND SPRAVATO EXPERIENCES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH, INSIGHTS, AND HEALING

We believe that the actions of ketamine and Spravato in helping people heal from mental health disorders involve more than just a direct biological effect.

These medications can also cause positive psychological changes that can be extremely useful in helping people develop a different perspective on their symptoms and emotional life, life situation and stressors, and relationships. They can also disrupt chronic repetitive negative thoughts, ruminations, and memories that tend to cause or or worsen depression and other psychiatric symptoms.

In order to take full advantage of these medication actions, we collaborate with a group of very experienced psychotherapists who have received formal training in Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP).

We require each patient starting a course of ketamine or Spravato to have a Preparation Session beforehand to learn what to expect at the treatments and how to manage thoughts, feelings, and experiences that may come up during the treatments, so as to best utilize the ketamine or Spravato experience.

In addition, we offer optional KAP Integration sessions during the treatment course, to help patients understand and process issues and experiences that may emerge during or after a treatment.

9. CLINICAL RESEARCH

We have an active and growing clinical research division that offers people the opportunity to participate in clinical trials of innovative new medications, medical devices, and digital apps for a number of different mental health conditions, such as treatment-resistant depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some of these experimental new treatments include psychedelic medications, such as psilocybin, ketamine, and LSD, as well as psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Ask us if you would qualify!

We were one of the research sites that participated in the recent groundbreaking Phase IIb COMPASS Pathways COMP360 clinical trial of psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). This was the largest psilocybin therapy clinical trial ever conducted, with 233 patients from 10 countries in North America and Europe.

It found that a 25 mg dose of psilocybin combined with psychological support was significantly superior to a very low 1 mg dose of psilocybin (essentially a placebo) in treating TRD. These encouraging results have led COMPASS Pathways to plan a larger, Phase III study of psilocybin 25 mg for TRD, to start later in 2022. Stay tuned!