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At 32, Raquel Bennett was looking for a reason to live. She’d struggled with severe depression for more than a decade, trying multiple antidepressants and years of talk therapy. The treatment helped, but not enough to make it seem worth living with a debilitating mental illness, she says. “I was desperate.” …

Every week, when Ian Hanley sits down with his therapist, he goes through a list of depression treatments he’s been researching online. The best-known treatments at the top of the list–half a dozen antidepressants and known combinations of those drugs–are all crossed out. “My therapist says he’s never had this much difficulty with somebody,” says Hanley, “which is sort of a dubious honor.” Hanley is only 21 years old, but he’s already six years into his search for something, anything, that can help him feel better for more than a few weeks at a time. “I’ve heard people describe it …

Joe Wright has no doubt that ketamine saved his life. A 34-year-old high school teacher who writes poetry every day on a typewriter, Wright was plagued by suicidal impulses for years. The thoughts started coming on when he was a high schooler himself, on Staten Island, N.Y., and intensified during his first year of college. “It was an internal monologue, emphatic on how pointless it is to exist,” he says. “It’s like being ambushed by your own brain.” …