The Symphony Effect: Using Om Chanting to Roll with Esketamine-Induced Dissociation

Objective. Esketamine is a powerful antidepressant that delivers instant relief of depressive mood. However, many found the induced dissociation intolerable in reliving one's trauma. A holistic approach, Om chanting, a sound-frequency meditative practice, is warranted in managing dissociative experience. The research problem is assessing the degree of optimism by using Om chanting during dissociation for adults with major depressive disorder (MDD). Method. Participants were recruited to practice Om chanting for 8 minutes during Esketamine treatment at an outpatient mental health clinic. Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) was conducted before, after, and one week after the intervention to evaluate a change in optimism, indicating the likelihood of treatment continuation. Results. Primary sources were observed with n = 9. The descriptive statistics included sex, age, ethnicity, education, and employment. The mean of age was 41.56, with the observed sex and ethnicity category skewed toward female and white. Most participants attended some college and were not currently employed. The repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) result was calculated based on an alpha of .05. The result for the within-groups factor was not significant, indicating the values among groups were all similar. Additionally, with a ρ- value of 0.279, indicating there was a low statistical significance. Conclusion. The investigator failed to reject the null hypothesis of no association between Om chanting and optimism afterward. Due to the small sample size and time constraints, future studies with a large participant group could better assess this phenomenon. These initial findings could provide an unexplored link to integrating meditative approaches during pharmacological treatments to improve patient outcomes and experiences.