Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic neuropsychiatric condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors that cause distress and functional impairment worldwide. Although selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and cognitive behavioral therapy are first-line treatments, a considerable proportion of patients show an insufficien...
With growing research on the use of psychedelics to treat mental health conditions, greater attention to the psychosocial procedures accompanying substance administration is warranted. This scoping review aims to categorize psychosocial protocols used in research involving psychedelics as psychiatric treatment according to their purpose, denomination, format...
Abstract Introduction Post-treatment Lyme Disease (PTLD) is a post-infectious syndrome characterized by fatigue, hypersomnia, sleep-disturbance, musculoskeletal pain and/or cognitive difficulties. As part of an open-label pilot study of psilocybin-assisted treatment for PTLD, we explored potential for psilocybin-assisted treatment to remedy sleep-related dis...
Objectives: For English, the validated part of Psychedelic Experience Scale (PES48) is a four-factor structure called the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30). The other validated part of the PES48 consists of four more factors: two more mystical factors (paradoxicality and connectedness, which together with the MEQ30 form the MEQ40), and two more non-m...
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) has re-emerged over the past decade as a promising therapeutic approach for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety associated with life-threatening illness, and substance use disorders. Substances such as psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, and LS...
Psilocybin is a psychoactive tryptamine produced by a phylogenetically discontinuous yet ecologically diverse subset of fungi. Despite decades of chemical, pharmacological, and ethnobiological research, the evolutionary forces driving the emergence and persistence of this compound remain insufficiently explained. Recent hypotheses proposing that psilocybin e...
This systematic review evaluates the efficacy and safety of psilocybin in the treatment of depressive disorders in adult populations, including major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. PRISMA guidelines were followed to identify and analyze clinical trials comparing psilocybin with different control conditions. Variables related to the r...
BackgroundThe Altered States of Consciousness Scale (3/5D-ASC or 11-ASC) is widely used to assess non-ordinary states of consciousness, particularly for psychedelic research. However, its original dimensional model (3D-ASC within 5D-ASC) and later 11-subscale structure (11-ASC) have a hierarchically incompatible higher/lower-order structure. Although the 11-...
Personality disorders (PDs) are characterized by rigid and maladaptive patterns of self- and interpersonal functioning, leading to high clinical burden and limited treatment outcomes. Schema Therapy (ST), an integrative psychotherapy rooted in cognitive-behavioral principles, conceptualizes PDs in terms of Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS)-pervasive cognitive-...
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has demonstrated efficacy in treating individual mental health conditions such as addiction, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, current research predominantly focuses on individual experiences, overlooking the relational and systemic factors that influence healing and long-term therapeutic out...
Serotonergic psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), are increasingly recognised as powerful tools to advance the understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain activity. Psychedelic research has informed neuroscientific theories that attempt to map neural observations of network connec...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and associated trauma and stressor-related disorders are common and debilitating, presenting significant treatment challenges due to their complex interplay of biological, cognitive, affective, somatic and social factors. Current treatments, while advancing and effective, yield limited efficacy for many individuals, unde...
This scoping review examines the emerging evidence for psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAP) in treating trauma-related disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and persistent post-concussion symptoms (PPCS), with specific implications for intimate partner violence (IPV)-related brain injury and PTSD. Guided by PRISMA-ScR methodology, ...
For 3000 years, psychedelics have been used in religious contexts to enhance spiritual thinking, well-being, and a sense of community. In the last few years, a renaissance in the use of psychedelic drugs for mental disorders has occurred in Western society; consequently, a pressing scientific need to elucidate the intricate mechanisms underlying their action...
BACKGROUND: The present study explored the acceptability of psilocybin-assisted group therapy from the perspective of patients with cancer and depression who participated in a clinical trial assessing the safety and efficacy of this novel intervention. METHODS: Guided by the conceptual framework of acceptability, the authors conducted semi-structured intervi...
Abstract Whether occasioned through careful, consistent meditative practice or through quicker means like the ritual ingestion of psilocybin or ayahuasca, global contemplative practices have established effective systems of implementing, directing, and integrating the very kinds of non-ordinary experiences central to psychedelic use. However, contemplative t...
Pilot studies have hinted that serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin may relieve depression, and could possibly do so by promoting neural plasticity. Intriguingly, another psychotomimetic compound, ketamine, is a fast-acting antidepressant and induces synapse formation. The similarities in behavioral and neural effects have been puzzling because the c...
The hypothesis of monoaminergic deficiency has long dominated the conceptual framework for the development of new antidepressant strategies, but the limits of conventional antidepressant treatments targeting monoaminergic signaling have motivated the search for new antidepressant pathways. The success of ketamine in the management of depressive disorders has...
Studies combining psychotherapy with psychedelic drugs (Ds) have demonstrated positive outcomes that are often associated with 'Ds' ability to induce 'mystical-type' experiences (MTEs) i.e., subjective experiences whose characteristics include a sense of connectedness, transcendence, and ineffability. We suggest that both PsiDs and virtual reality can be sit...
in this time of ever ascendant materialism, greed, and pathological narcissism, when the delusion of the disconnected dominant individual grows stronger, the contrary life-affirming stream of connection and respect is gaining strength even as it is suppressed, vilified, and criminalized. This stream, which we can call ‘awakening consciousness,’ is the motor ...
