The depressive disorder is a substantial public health concern that it affects more than 300 million people around the world. A new study finds that two doses of psilocybin, administered with supportive psychotherapy, produced a rapid and large reduction in depressive symptoms.
Most attendees have showed improvements and half achieved remission at the four-week follow-up. Psilocybin is a compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms”. It produces visual and auditory and profound hallucinations changes in consciousness, for a period of several hours.
Depression, psilocybin could reduce the disease
The magnitude of the effect seen was about four times greater than what clinical studies have shown for traditional antidepressants on the market. The effect sizes reported in this study were approximately 2.5 times the effect sizes found in psychotherapy and more than 4 times the effect size found in studies on the treatment of psychopharmacological depression.
Since most other depression treatments take weeks or months to work and can have side effects, this could be a turning point if these results were evident. Compared to traditional antidepressants, the side effects of psilocybin are more limited. These include mild to moderate headaches and “provocative emotions“During the sessions. Antidepressant drugs, on the other hand, have more far-reaching side effects. These include suicidal ideation, decreased sexual desire e weight gain.
The effectiveness of psilocybin therapy appears after only one or two administrations. This represents another advantage over commonly used antidepressants, which typically require daily administration. For the new studio, the researchers recruited 24 people with a long-term history of depression.
A very large reduction in depressive symptoms
Most of the participants had experienced symptoms for about two years before enrolling in the study. Participants underwent two five-hour psilocybin sessions, supervised by researchers. Participants have gradually reduced antidepressants prior to the study with the help of their personal physician, to ensure safe exposure to this experimental treatment.
After the treatment, most of the participants have showed a substantial decrease in symptoms. Similarly, nearly half were in remission from depression at the four-week follow-up. For the whole group of 24 participants, 67% showed a reduction of more than 50% in symptoms depression at the one-week follow-up and 71% at the four-week follow-up. Overall, four weeks after treatment, 54% of the participants were considered to be in remission, which meant that he no longer qualified as depressed.
Research on treatment with moderate to high doses of psychedelics can discover completely new paradigms for understanding and improvement mood and of the mind.
Photo on Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke gives Pixabay
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