Depression is a common mental health issue that affects 280 million people in the world with a high mortality rate, as well as being a leading cause of disability. Psychopharmacological therapies with psychedelics, particularly those with psilocybin, are showing promising potential for the treatment of depression, among other conditions. Some of their benefi...
Psychedelic compounds have shown extraordinary potential in treating a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders. Psilocybin, for example, has now been shown in several clinical trials to induce a rapid (within days) and persistent (3-12 months) improvement in human treatment-resistant depression and other neuropsychiatric conditions. Here we review the precl...
Depression is a major public health concern. Unfortunately, the present antidepressants often are insufficiently effective, whilst the discovery of more effective antidepressants has been extremely sluggish. The objective of this review was to combine the literature on depression with the pharmacology of antidepressant compounds, in order to formulate a conc...
Introduction: Psilocybin has shown long-lasting antidepressant effects in preclinical and clinical trials, but the mechanisms responsible are unclear. As both passive coping strategies and pattern separation deficits are characteristics of major depression, we used adult female rats subjected to adolescent chronic restraint stress (aCRS) to investigate the e...
Psilocybin has been shown to improve symptoms of depression and anxiety when combined with psychotherapy or other clinician-guided interventions. To understand the neural basis for this pattern of clinical efficacy, experimental and conceptual approaches that are different than traditional laboratory models of anxiety and depression are needed. A potential n...
Background: Psilocybin-assisted therapies (PAT) are reemerging as a treatment for complex distress often prompting mystical experiences, enhanced meaning, and spiritual wellbeing. We sought to investigate how measures of spirituality are employed in experimental studies of PAT conducted with seriously ill adults. Methods: We included experimental studies of ...
The classical psychedelic psilocybin is of interest as a treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). This study investigated the effects of psilocybin on voluntary ethanol consumption in adult male and female C57BL/6J mice administered saline or psilocybin intraperitoneally as a single dose of 0.1, 0.5, 1.0 or 2.0 mg/kg and provided 20% ethanol utilizing a two...
There has recently been a resurgence of interest in psychedelic compounds based on studies demonstrating their potential therapeutic applications in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse disorders, and treatment-resistant depression. Despite promising efficacy observed in some clinical trials, the full range of biological effects and mecha...
Research on classical psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD and DMT) and entactogen, MDMA, has produced a renaissance in the search for more effective drugs to treat psychiatric, neurological and various peripheral disorders. Psychedelics and entactogens act though interaction with 5-HT2A and other serotonergic receptors and/or monoamine reuptake transporters. 5-HT,...
Classic psychedelics, such as psilocybin, act on the brain's serotonin system and produce striking psychological effects. Early work in the 1950s and 1960s and more recent controlled studies suggest benefit from psychedelic treatment in a number of conditions. A few case reports in recreational users and a single experimental study suggest benefit in patient...
ObjectiveUsing a patient-informed regimen, we conducted an exploratory randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to systematically investigate the effects of psilocybin in cluster headache.BackgroundSustained reductions in cluster headache burden after limited quantities of psilocybin-containing mushrooms are anecdotally reported, although to date t...
Several lines of evidence suggest that classic hallucinogens such as psilocybin can facilitate behavior change in addictions such as alcohol dependence. The proposed investigation is a multi-site, double-blind active-controlled trial (n = 180, 90 per group) contrasting the acute and persisting effects of psilocybin to those of diphenhydramine in the context ...
Microdosing-the intermittent ingestion of minute, sub-hallucinogenic amounts of psychedelic substances, repeatedly and over time-has become a widespread, albeit largely understudied, phenomenon. Regulations around using psychedelics at any dose-micro, mini, macro, or mega-pose all sorts of difficulties for those who wish to systematically study the effects o...
Psilocybin is a plant alkaloid that is derived from precursors of tryptamine and is present in many different types of mushrooms. It has been utilized by indigenous peoples of Central and South America for centuries in a ceremonial setting to promote spiritual experiences. Indigenous societies have long employed psilocybin and other 5-HT2A agonist classic ps...
Purpose/backgroundThere has been resurgence of interest in the therapeutic use of serotonergic ("classic") psychedelics in major depressive disorder (MDD) and end-of-life distress. This commentary offers a critical appraisal of current evidence for antidepressant effects of classic psychedelics from contemporary clinical trials and highlights pitfalls that s...
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy holds great promise in the treatment of mental health disorders. Research into 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) agonist psychedelic compounds has increased dramatically over the past two decades. In humans, these compounds produce drastic effects on consciousness, and their therapeutic potential relates to changes ...
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is characterized by visual disturbances that resemble psychedelic intoxication and linger after use has ceased. The most common substances precipitating HPPD, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, are posited to do so via damage to serotonergic neurons involved in vision. Mr. N is a 37-year-old wi...
ObjectiveSerotonergic psychedelics are re-emerging as potential novel treatments for several psychiatric disorders including major depressive disorder. The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) convened a task force to review the evidence and provide a consensus recommendation for the clinical use of psychedelic treatments for major depre...
BackgroundEvidence points to an incongruence between international drug policy and expert opinion about safety, abuse potential, and therapeutic potential of specific drugs. However, no prior studies have directly explored psychiatrists' attitudes about the current drug schedule. Therefore, we examined whether American psychiatrists' perceptions of four psyc...
