As the medicinal use of psychedelics gains mainstream attention, fears remain over their effect on mental health and the need for safe administration
n June 2021, 32-year-old actor Kate Hyatt travelled to a farmhouse near Great Malvern in Worcerstershire for a plant medicine retreat that she hoped would improve her mental health after a difficult time during the pandemic lockdowns. While there, she is believed to have taken a substance called wachuma, or San Pedro cactus, a powerful hallucinogen used by Indigenous people in the Andes for thousands of years.
Yet without careful monitoring and scrutiny of who receives them, this class of drugs – which includes LSD, MDMA and psilocybin – can be dangerous. There isthat they can destabilise vulnerable individuals who have experienced a previous psychotic episode or have a family history of psychosis. The substances are illegal to distribute and possess in the UK, although they are often obtained on the hidden market.
Scientists feel that the popular discussion of psychedelics often downplays the importance of psychotherapy in clinical studies, before and after the drugs are administered. The therapist’s role is not only to help the patient process and learn from their experience, but to keep them safe. phase 3 trial of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder , meaning it can now apply for regulatory approval.with treatment-resistant depression were in remission after three weeks and a phase 3 trial is under way. “We think this is extremely good,” says Guy Goodwin, chief medical officer at the company. “These patients have got treatment-resistant depression where they’ve had at least two failures with antidepressant treatments previously.
“There are pressures to get things pushed forward,” he says. “The results are promising, but I think we need to do more research. There are lessons from the 50s, 60s and 70s, when psychedelics were pushed through quite quickly and things didn’t end well.”gave psychiatrists the green light from last month to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin for PTSD and depression.
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