healthnewsreview.com:


"As the article nicely points out, mental health problems like addiction or depression are thought of as chronic, lifelong diseases, but what if that’s an ineffective approach for many people? What if anxious or depressed people were, instead, treated by a small number of episodes of profoundly perspective-altering drugs, which rewires one’s underlying personal philosophy and brings relief that way? Would this not represent a dramatic paradigm-crushing approach to treating mental illness?

While the story raises these questions in an intriguing fashion, details on the research are fleeting and there’s not enough context to give readers a balanced view of the issues involved. As the story points out, early results suggest that these substances might be worth substantial increases in research in treating mental illnesses. But the current evidence base is characterized by tiny numbers of subjects and is almost anecdotal in nature, so a bit more caution about the likelihood of a “paradigm shift” in this area would have been welcome.


Why This Matters

There are many people who have addictions, are uncontrollably anxious or suffer severe depression who are not well served by the current armamentarium of conventional prescription drugs and so increased research on a range of psychoactive substances derived from plants or fungi seem a promising area of research. Assurances that such research can be done in controlled, monitored situations by competent scientists may help revamp an area of drug therapy that was up to now written off as dangerous, addictive and generally pushed to the margins of society."