I am afraid that such psychoactive drugs are fairly crude/blunt instruments/medications for treating severe psychological disorders. This is certainly no panacea by any measure!
"... A treatment might show benefits in a trial because the experience is carefully coordinated, and everyone is well trained. Placebo controls pose another challenge because the drugs have such powerful effects. ...
And there are risks. In extremely rare instances, psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD can evoke a lasting psychotic reaction, more often in people with a family history of psychosis. Those with schizophrenia, for example, are excluded from trials involving psychedelics as a result. ...
Several trials show dramatic results: in a study published in November 2020, for example, 71% of people who took Psilocybin for major depressive disorder showed a greater than 50% reduction in symptoms after four weeks, and half of the participants entered remission. Some follow-up studies after therapy, although small, have shown lasting benefits. ...
In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists published more than 1,000 articles on using psychedelics as a psychiatric treatment; the drugs were tested on around 40,000 people in total. Then, as recreational use of the drugs spread, they were banned and the FDA constricted supplies for research. Only recently have neuroscientists and psychopharmacologists ... had the technology to start unpicking how they work in the brain. ...
It is now thought that these antidepressants work not by flooding the brain with the neurotransmitter, as was initially assumed, but by stimulating neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to forge new neuronal connections. There is some evidence that psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, enhance neuroplasticity in animals, and limited evidence suggests that the same might happen in human brains ..."
And there are risks. In extremely rare instances, psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD can evoke a lasting psychotic reaction, more often in people with a family history of psychosis. Those with schizophrenia, for example, are excluded from trials involving psychedelics as a result. ...
Several trials show dramatic results: in a study published in November 2020, for example, 71% of people who took Psilocybin for major depressive disorder showed a greater than 50% reduction in symptoms after four weeks, and half of the participants entered remission. Some follow-up studies after therapy, although small, have shown lasting benefits. ...
In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists published more than 1,000 articles on using psychedelics as a psychiatric treatment; the drugs were tested on around 40,000 people in total. Then, as recreational use of the drugs spread, they were banned and the FDA constricted supplies for research. Only recently have neuroscientists and psychopharmacologists ... had the technology to start unpicking how they work in the brain. ...
It is now thought that these antidepressants work not by flooding the brain with the neurotransmitter, as was initially assumed, but by stimulating neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to forge new neuronal connections. There is some evidence that psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, enhance neuroplasticity in animals, and limited evidence suggests that the same might happen in human brains ..."
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