Why Psychedelics Are Some Of The Most Promising Treatments For Depression, Anxiety And Addiction

There are people that suffer from different mental health problems like depression. Johns Hopkins University has launched a center for psychedelic research with $17 million in donations solely from private donors, the first of its kind in the U.S. Research has shown that psychedelics given during psychotherapy sessions can help people with depression and anxiety.

This review discusses 4 types of compounds: 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, ketamine, classical psychedelics (e.g., psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide), and cannabinoids. There are many different alternatives to treating depression including talk therapy, anti-depression medication, journaling, yoga, and most often a combination of the multitude of therapies which tend to work best.

And while that may sound outlandish to some, researchers at places like Johns Hopkins University are looking into the therapeutic and medical value of psychedelics. Psilocybin may follow the same course as cannabis did 20 years ago,” she explains — but for now, it's not available outside clinical studies.

The Centre for Affective Disorders at King's College London was awarded a large grant from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in 2017 to investigate the safety, feasibility and efficacy of psilocybin as a treatment for clinical depression that has not improved with standard treatments, using the gold standard design of a randomised, placebo-controlled trial.

The use of psychedelics as medicines has recently been called a new emerging paradigm ( Nichols et al., 2017 ). Although many questions remain about the mechanisms of action and efficacy, psychedelic drugs have seen a renaissance in research on their therapeutic potential, ranging from the treatment of depression to substance use disorders and PTSD ( Kyzar et al., 2017 ; Curran et al., 2018 ). Psychedelic drugs (sometimes referred to as hallucinogens or entactogens) refer to a category of compounds that can induce a wide range of psychological, cognitive, emotional, and physical effects ( Nichols, 2004 ; Vollenweider therapy and Kometer, 2010 ). For this review, we use a broad definition of psychedelic drugs, which includes substances such as MDMA, ketamine, and cannabis, whose pharmacological profiles differ substantially from the serotonergic classical” psychedelics (such as psilocybin and LSD) but which all share the capacity for inducing an altered or opening of the sense of self.

Exploring the use of psychedelic drugs within these new approaches might open a range of new possibilities to improve the efficacy of PTSD treatments. Loneliness, uncertainty and grief may be intensifying an already acute mental health crisis, and in the US there has been a 20% spike in the number of prescriptions for antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs during lockdown.

As a result of their research on how psychedelics can be used to help smokers and cancer patients, Johnson and others at Johns Hopkins have suggested that psilocybin's FDA classification should be changed from Schedule I, which means that it has no known medical benefit, to Schedule IV, similar to prescription drugs.