This week's blog post is about a surprising recent trend in mental health treatment: psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. Far from the trippy image of the 1960s, these medications are now the subject of serious scientific study and have been featured in the pages of Good Housekeeping magazine. Yet they still carry risks. Here's a post on the current status of these treatments: https://sites.google.com/view/two-minds/blog
Hi,
Here are some good references on this topic:
Nutt D. Psychedelic drugs-a new era in psychiatry? . Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2019;21(2):139-147. doi: 10.31887/DCNS.2019.21.2/dnutt
Rucker JJH, Iliff J, Nutt DJ. Psychiatry & the psychedelic drugs. Past, present & future. Neuropharmacology. 2018 Nov;142:200-218. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2017.12.040
De Gregorio D, Aguilar-Valles A, Preller KH, Heifets BD, Hibicke M, Mitchell J, Gobbi G. Hallucinogens in Mental Health: Preclinical and Clinical Studies on LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, and Ketamine. J Neurosci. 2021 Feb 3;41(5):891-900. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1659-20.2020
Krediet E, Bostoen T, Breeksema J, van Schagen A, Passie T, Vermetten E. Reviewing the Potential of Psychedelics for the Treatment of PTSD. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2020 Jun 24;23(6):385-400. doi: 10.1093/ijnp/pyaa018
Of note is that this is still an area of expanding research and should be pursued with care and appropriate supervision. Some psychedelics may react negatively with mainstream antidepressants such that a serotonin syndrome may result. While these drugs may have benefit they must be used carefully. It does, however, hearken a potential revolution in mental health care.
In my opinion, we, as psychiatrists, should be cautious about using psychedelic drugs. They can do more harm than good. I mean, we should not fall for its floating out effects. In other words, just as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Sefa, I would agree with your words of caution. Ketamine (not really a psychedelic as psychedelics tend to, as i understand it, work through serotonin) can be very beneficial and I've a couple patients for whom that treatment has been a significant success. That treatment, however, was done in a supervised setting. More research is definitely needed. Psychedelics are definitely not mainstream.
Caution and control over experimental research is warranted until we know more about how various people will respond to doses of psychedelics.
This week's blog post is about psilocybin as a treatment for depression. This is now legal in Colorado, and studies suggest that it is efficacious, but why it works is still up for scientific debate: https://sites.google.com/view/two-minds/blog
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