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a separate smaller experiment It turned out to support the notion that psilocybin therapy, featured in the Nature Medicine article, could provide lasting benefits. In this trial, 16 patients were recruited with the knowledge that they would receive psilocybin for their treatment-resistant depression. Brain scans taken the day after the last doses were administered showed similar results to the other study. And when the researchers followed up six months later, many participants reported that improvements in their depression had not diminished.
Dr. “These results are very promising, but frankly no one should try and take psychedelics without going out and talking to a doctor or therapist,” Daws said.
The field of psychedelic medicine is still in its infancy after a decades-long gap in research, as a direct result of anti-drug policies in the United States that have prevented most scientists from researching mind-altering compounds. But as stigma waned and research funding began to flow more freely, a growing number of scientists began investigating whether such drugs could help patients suffering from a wide variety of mental health conditions, including anorexia, substance abuse, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. .
Along with psilocybin, MDMA, popularly known as Ecstasy, is particularly promising. A work last May In Nature Medicine, the drug paired with talk therapy has significantly reducing or even eliminating PTSD symptoms. Phase 3 clinical trials are currently underway, and some experts believe the Food and Drug Administration may approve MDMA therapy for PTSD as soon as next year.
With an estimated 21 million adults reporting a major depressive episode in 2020, depression remains one of the most prevalent and persistent mental health problems in the United States. National Institute of Mental Health. While Prozac and other antidepressants known as SSRIs are effective for many, they have significant side effects and the drugs won’t work for everyone.
That’s why the few small studies on psilocybin and depression have excited mental health professionals and their patients.
Another author of the Nature Medicine paper published Monday, Robin Carhart-Harris, director of the Department of Neuroscape Psychedelics at the University of California, San Francisco, said functional magnetic resonance imaging scans offer interesting clues about how depression lives in the brain. He suggested that the resulting images would best be compared to an undulating pastoral landscape marked by hills and deep valleys. He said that people with depression are often stuck in a valley. While SSRIs may make them feel better, the drugs don’t seem to change the overall appearance of their brains, suggesting that the drugs do little more than relieve symptoms of depression.
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