With the Food and Drug Administration designation in 2017 of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) as a breakthrough therapy in post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression, psychedelic drugs have continued to garner the attention of researchers and clinicians for their promise of unmatched, rapid improvement in a multit...
Nature created a mushroom-based compound known as psilocybin that can biochemically alter perception and affect mental anguish. Medical research shows that psilocybin activates the brain, engendering new cognition and awareness. Although psilocybin usage dates to ancient times, its contemporary medical usefulness is still in its infancy. This review discusse...
Major depressive disorder presents a substantial global health burden, and at least 30-40% of patients exhibit treatment resistance to antidepressants. Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, is used as an anesthetic agent. In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved esketamine (the S-enantiomer of ketamine) as a therapeutic agent for treatm...
Participants with depression will be given a single dose of psilocybin and supportive psychotherapy before, during, and after drug administration. Participants will undergo positron emission tomography (PET) imaging before and one week after psilocybin using a marker of synaptic density. This design allows us to assess the relationship between neurotrophic, ...
No single effective therapy for alcohol abuse has been found, despite it being a serious sociological and economic problem for hundreds of years. It seems difficult to find a single drug as a panacea for the alcohol problem due to the complexity of the pathophysiology of alcohol dependence. The purpose of this narrative review is to review existing and poten...
Mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety are major contributors to the overall global health burden. COVID-19 has further aggravated mental health disorders and also increased substance abuse due to lockdowns1. The Global Burden of Disease reported that the pandemic has led to a 27.6% increase in cases of major depressive disorder (MDD) and a 2...
Pharmacotherapy of depression is characterized by the delayed onset of action, chronic treatment requirements, and insufficient effectiveness. Ketamine, with its rapid action and long-lasting effects, represents a breakthrough in the modern pharmacotherapy of depression. The current review summarizes the latest findings on the mechanism of the antidepressant...
Background: Therapeutic administration of psychedelic drugs has shown significant potential in historical accounts and in recent clinical trials in the treatment of depression and other mood disorders. A recent randomized double-blind phase-IIb study demonstrated the safety and efficacy of COMP360, COMPASS Pathways’ proprietary synthetic formulation of psilo...
Background: Therapeutic administration of psychedelic drugs has shown significant potential in historical accounts and in recent clinical trials in the treatment of depression and other mood disorders. A recent randomized double-blind phase-IIb study demonstrated the safety and efficacy of COMP360, COMPASS Pathways’ proprietary synthetic formulation of psilo...
There is mounting evidence suggesting psychedelic and entactogen medicines (namely psilocybin and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine [MDMA]), in conjunction with proper psychosocial support, hold the potential to provide safe, rapid acting, and robust clinical improvements with durable effects. In the US, both psilocybin and MDMA have been granted Breakthroug...
Over the last two decades, a number of studies have highlighted the potential of psychedelic therapy. However, questions remain to what extend these results translate to naturalistic samples, and how contextual factors and the acute psychedelic experience relate to improvements in affective symptoms following psychedelic experiences outside labs/clinics. The...
Psilocybin recently received breakthrough status by the FDA for its use in treatment of depression. We therefore investigated mental health professionals' (MHPs) opinions on Psilocybin (n = 155). Overall, attitudes were neutral but self-rated knowledge of Psilocybin was low. The term used in the survey, 'Psilocybin' or 'Magic Mushrooms', did not significantl...
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted breakthrough therapy status to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) in 2017 due to preliminary evidence supporting its efficacy and safety in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A series of six phase-II clinical trials studying MDMA-AT for treatment-resistant PTSD found that...
Effects of serotonin 2A/1A receptor stimulation by psilocybin on mood and emotion processing in major depressive disorder: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the world's greatest contributor to the global burden of disease and MDD affects around 17% of the Swiss population (Tomonaga et al. 2013). It i...
Background: Across psychotherapeutic frameworks, the strength of the therapeutic alliance has been found to correlate with treatment outcomes; however, its role has never been formally assessed in a trial of psychedelic-assisted therapy. We aimed to investigate the relationships between therapeutic alliance and rapport, the quality of the acute psychedelic e...
Psilocybin, a serotonergic agonist, was granted a "breakthrough therapy" status by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical trials involving major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. The direct phosphorylation of psilocin to psilocybin that uses a fast crystallization associated with a kinetically controlled process resulted in a sma...
Psychedelic-assisted therapy research for depression and PTSD has been fast tracked in the United States with the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) granting breakthrough designations for MDMA (post-traumatic stress disorder) and psilocybin (major depressive disorder). The psychotherapeutic treatments accompanying these psychedelics have not been well-studi...
A confluence of factors has renewed interest in the scientific understanding and translational potential of psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and psilocybin: the desire for additional approaches to mental health care, incremental progress in basic and clinical research, and the reconsideration and relaxation of existing d...
The studies of psychedelics, especially psychedelic tryptamines like psilocybin, are rapidly gaining interest in neuroscience research. Much of this interest stems from recent clinical studies demonstrating that they have a unique ability to improve the debilitating symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) long-term after only a single treatment. Indeed, ...
Introduction Major depressive disorder is a highly prevalent clinical condition, affecting more than 300 million individuals worldwide. About 1/3 of patients with MDD fail to achieve remission despite treatment with multiple antidepressants and are considered to have treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Novel antidepressants with rapid and sustained effects...
