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Checking on patients four hours after the drug had been administered, the researchers saw something unexpected.
研究人員在給藥四小時后對病人進行檢查，他們發現了一些意想不到的事情。
"To our surprise," Charney says, "the patients started saying they were better, they were better in a few hours."
查尼說：“讓我們吃驚的是，病人們開始說他們感覺好多了，幾個小時后病情就好很多。”
This was unheard of. Antidepressants are known for taking weeks or months to work, and about a third of patients aren't sufficiently helped by the drugs.
這簡直是聞所未聞。眾所周知，抗抑郁藥需要服用數周或數月才能起效，大約三分之一的患者都沒有通過服藥而獲得足夠的幫助。
"We were shocked," says Krystal, who now chairs the Yale psychiatry department. "We didn't submit the results for publication for several years."
現在擔任耶魯精神病學系主任的克里斯托表示：“我們感到很震驚，我們好幾年都沒有發表這一結果。”
When Charney and Krystal did publish their findings, in 2000, they attracted almost no notice.
查尼和克里斯托在2000年發表他們的研究結果時，幾乎無人問津。
Perhaps that was because the trial was so small and the results were almost too good to be true.
也許是因為試驗規模過小，而且結果過于理想化。
Or maybe it was ketamine's reputation as an illicit drug. Or the side effects, which have always been problematic:
或者可能因為氯胺酮是一種非法藥物，又或者是因為它一直存在的副作用：
Ketamine can cause patients to disassociate, meaning they enter a state in which they feel as if their mind and body aren't connected.
氯胺酮可能導致患者脫離社會，這意味著他們進入一種身心脫離的狀態。
But probably none of these factors mattered as much as the bald economic reality.
但這些因素可能都不像缺乏資金那么重要。
The pharmaceutical industry is not in the business of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do large-scale studies of an old, cheap drug like ketamine.
制藥行業不會花費數億美元對氯胺酮這樣的廉價舊藥做大規模的研究。
Originally developed as a safer alternative to the anesthetic phencyclidine, better known as PCP or angel dust, ketamine has been approved since 1970.
氯胺酮從1970年起就得到批準使用，最初是作為麻醉劑苯西克定的一種更安全的替代品開發出來的，苯西克定通常被稱為五氯苯酚或天使塵。
There's rarely profit in developing a medication that's been off patent a long time, even if scientists find an entirely new use for it.
即使科學家們發現了藥物的一種全新用途，開發一種長期未獲得專利的藥物幾乎是無利可圖。
Somehow, even with all of this baggage, research into ketamine inched forward. The small study that almost wasn't published has now been cited more than 2,000 times.
即使存在這些看法，但對氯胺酮的研究仍在向前發展。這項幾乎沒有發表的小型研究已被引用超過2000次。
Suicide is described in medicine as resulting from a range of mental disorders and hardships—a tragedy with many possible roots.
在醫學上，自殺被描述為由一系列精神障礙和困境遭遇所致，它是由許多可能存在的原因所引發的悲劇。
Conditions such as severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are known risk factors.
嚴重抑郁癥、雙相情感障礙和精神分裂癥等疾病都是已知的危險因素。
Childhood trauma or abuse may also be a contributor, and there may be genetic risk factors as well.
兒童創傷或虐待也可能是一個因素，還可能存在遺傳風險因素。
