Why on earth would you be concerned about a tool which allows clinically depressed individuals to see immediate, significant improvement in their condition with relatively few side effects? You should also not group ketamine therapy with prozac, they are completely different drugs with completely different mechanisms of action, grouping them under a broad "antidepressant!" umbrella is borderline negligent.
Psychotherapy is often a long, drawn out process which doesn't necessarily always guarantee results. Not to mention the large amount of variance between individual therapists.
Psychotherapy is useful as an adjunct to psychiatric drugs, and vice versa. They are both useful tools when fighting mental illness, and are even more efficacious when combined. Drawing a line between the two for ideological reasons, instead of purely evidence-based results, is a mistake.
Similar to how diabetics are dependent on insulin, or schizophrenics dependent on their anti-psychotic medication?
You're also implying that people with severe, clinical depression can assuredly be helped by psychotherapy. I'm sorry, but the literature is far more abysmal than that. Many patients don't even respond to psychotherapy, and need psychiatric intervention in the same way a schizophrenic does.
I would also point out that dialysis, chemotherapy, etc are also quite expensive, time consuming, and difficult to scale. We still consider them valid, life-saving treatments.
Ketamine is not your traditional SSRI. You're making the same error as the other poster in grouping all "antidepressants" under the same umbrella, which is particularly egregious when discussing ketamine.
I lack training in psychopharmacology or neuroscience and thus my interpretation of the research is that of a layperson, but my understanding from talking with psychiatrists on the matter is that it is unlikely that ketamine will become a frontline treatment but its mechanism of action will be explored and lead to the development of new drugs that activate the same pathways in the brain but lack or have lessened anesthetic effect.
This is a horribly ignorant statement. Ketamine therapy is in no way comparable to widespread opioid prescription in risk. You are once again comparing drugs with entirely different mechanisms of action.