A new treatment clinic is now open for those who have struggled to find relief from their major depression via the typical pathways – and it specializes in treating patients with a medication that’s FDA-approved and covered by most insurance.
Lumin Health, now open in Woburn, MA, at 300 Tradecenter Drive, offers supervised ketamine and esketamine treatment for those who have severe depression or other mental health conditions that have not responded to the traditional treatments of psychotherapy and medication.
While ketamine is more familiar to many as an anesthetic and has even been used as a party drug, it has also long been used for its mental health applications. Ketamine therapy has been explored for decades and rose in use as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and major depressive disorder in the late 2010s.
This kind of treatment, frequently administered in a supervised clinical setting, offers a novel pathway to feeling better where other medications have fallen short. Lumin Health’s clinics, says co-founder Dr. Ben Yudkoff, are similarly novel as a patient-centered treatment facility that feels more like a living room than a hospital room.
With locations already in Newton and Cambridge, Lumin Health has its roots at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital, where Yudkoff helped start an injectables program for long-acting antipsychotic medications and later a ketamine clinic. Over several years of working in an evolving landscape of mental health treatment options, Yudkoff developed an approach that involved treating symptoms rather than the diagnosis.
The same condition can present in many different ways, Yudkoff explained, and often specific medications are more suited to specific sets of symptoms. “If you resolve to a symptom-based structure as opposed to diagnosis-based structure, you sometimes get much better outcomes for people who are having a harder time,” he said.
The ketamine clinic, started by Yudkoff and fellow clinicians in 2019, was successful, and after three years he saw an opportunity – alongside business partner Gene Dolgin – to practice this academic treatment approach in a private-practice setting.
At the center of the Lumin Health experience, according to Yudkoff, is the patient, whose specific situation, needs, and “intrinsic value” are considered from the first intake call to development of the treatment plan to the decorations inside the treatment rooms.
“Everybody who comes to the site should find something that is welcoming to them in particular,” said Yudkoff. “And when someone walks into that kind of environment, they realize the environment wants them… and that can sometimes be a surrogate for what a person can’t feel for themselves.”
And, in an age where many ketamine clinics are operated online, Yudkoff said Lumin wanted to opt for an in-person experience. “When you’re seeing patients in person, you can see how they’re doing…what they look like…if they’re showering… We’re a part of somebody’s life and people have made the decision that they’d rather have that kind of [relationship].”
Yudkoff says ketamine and esketamine (Spravato) can have a profound and often immediate impact on how the brain processes experiences and memories and how new pathways – pathways that support recovery – are built. The experience can allow patients to experience joy and wonder again and lessen the feeling of futility that depression often brings.
“People feel better, they’re more upright, which means they can take more action. The threshold at which things feel futile changes. So people can pursue activities that may have otherwise felt impossible before. People may see the world less through negative perceptions. And so that also enables people to get into the world again.”
The first Lumin Health clinic opened in Newton in 2022 and later moved to a larger location; another opened in Harvard Square in 2023. Now, Lumin has opened the doors to its third clinic in Woburn, MA. The goal with expansion is to reach more patients while maintaining the high-touch ethos that distinguishes these clinics from many others.
Lumin Health is now open at 300 Tradecenter Drive, #3460. You can learn more about the treatment options and schedule an intake call by visiting their website or calling (617) 644-4045.
Disclosure: Lumin is a sponsor of Burlington Buzz. The company’s co-founder was interviewed for this Business Spotlight. Burlington Buzz regularly features local businesses, including both sponsors and non-sponsors, as part of its Business Spotlight coverage.