Posted on 02/15/2022 9:45:02 AM PST by Red Badger
Previous studies by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers showed that psychedelic treatment with psilocybin relieved major depressive disorder symptoms in adults for up to a month. Now, in a follow-up study of those participants, the researchers report that the substantial antidepressant effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy, given with supportive psychotherapy, may last at least a year for some patients.
A report on the new study was published on Feb. 15, 2022 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
"Our findings add to evidence that, under carefully controlled conditions, this is a promising therapeutic approach that can lead to significant and durable improvements in depression," says Natalie Gukasyan, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She cautions, however, that "the results we see are in a research setting and require quite a lot of preparation and structured support from trained clinicians and therapists, and people should not attempt to try it on their own."
Over the last 20 years, there has been a growing renaissance of research with classic psychedelics—the pharmacological class of compounds that include psilocybin, an ingredient found in so-called magic mushrooms. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, psilocybin can produce perceptual changes, altering a person's awareness of their surroundings and of their thoughts and feelings. Treatment with psilocybin has shown promise in research settings for treating a range of mental health disorders and addictions.
For this study, the researchers recruited 27 participants with a long-term history of depression, most of whom had been experiencing depressive symptoms for approximately two years before recruitment. The average age of participants was 40, 19 were women, and 25 identified as white, one as African American and one as Asian. Eighty-eight percent of the participants had previously been treated with standard antidepressant medications, and 58% reported using antidepressants in their current depressive episodes.
After screening, participants were randomized into one of two groups in which they received the intervention either immediately, or after an eight-week waiting period. At the time of treatment, all participants were provided with six to eight hours of preparatory meetings with two treatment facilitators. Following preparation, participants received two doses of psilocybin, given approximately two weeks apart between August 2017 and April 2019 at the Behavioral Biology Research Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Participants returned for follow-up one day and one week after each session, and then at one, three, six and 12 months following the second session; 24 participants completed both psilocybin sessions and all follow-up assessment visits.
The researchers reported that psilocybin treatment in both groups produced large decreases in depression, and that depression severity remained low one, three, six and 12 months after treatment. Depressive symptoms were measured before and after treatment using the GRID-Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, a standard depression assessment tool, in which a score of 24 or more indicates severe depression, 17–23 moderate depression, 8–16 mild depression and 7 or less no depression. For most participants, scores for the overall treatment decreased from 22.8 at pretreatment to 8.7 at one week, 8.9 at four weeks, 9.3 at three months, 7 at six months and 7.7 at 12 months after treatment. Participants had stable rates of response to the treatment and remission of symptoms throughout the follow-up period, with 75% response and 58% remission at 12 months.
"Psilocybin not only produces significant and immediate effects, it also has a long duration, which suggests that it may be a uniquely useful new treatment for depression," says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the Oliver Lee McCabe III, Ph.D., Professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. "Compared to standard antidepressants, which must be taken for long stretches of time, psilocybin has the potential to enduringly relieve the symptoms of depression with one or two treatments."
The researchers emphasize that further research is needed to explore the possibility that the efficacy of psilocybin treatment may be substantially longer than 12 months. Johns Hopkins is one of the sites of a national multisite randomized, placebo-controlled trial of psilocybin for major depressive disorder.
Explore further
Psychedelic treatment with psilocybin relieves major depression, study shows
More information:
Natalie Gukasyan et al, Efficacy and safety of psilocybin-assisted treatment for major depressive disorder: Prospective 12-month follow-up, Journal of Psychopharmacology (2022).
DOI: 10.1177/02698811211073759
Journal information: Journal of Psychopharmacology
Provided by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
What is a microdose?
How much?
Is it even enough to garner a biological response?
“Yeah - depression is so overrated, all the current remedies do such a good job. Lets make sure we condemn all possible alternatives to SSRPs.”
You said that, not me.
Who in college liked having something pop off like popcorn, so why not cater to the customer?
this is correct.
Can say based on experience that in the right environment and responsibly consumed this is probably the safest mind altering substance in existence.
Perhaps Mckenna’s eschaton is neither the mushroom (that enlightens mankind) nor the mushroom cloud (that destroys mankind) but the discovery of how consciousness is connected to physics.
Physical objects only exist if there is an observer. And physical properties of objects vary based on the frame of reference of the observer. We take for granted the element of time in physics, but it is as much (or more so) a property of the consciousness of the observer as a property of physics.
If self-awareness (i.e. self-observation) is at the heart of being conscious, then all scientific experimentation is an extension of consciousness. But because we do not fully understand what consciousness is, the mind-altering effects of drugs like psilocybin are as mysterious to us as any of the “spooky” aspects of quantum physics.
I view McKenna as someone who opened the doors that future thinkers will be traveling through for centuries.
He viewed language as so critical to understanding—as a result it may require totally new forms of language to make real breakthroughs in many different areas.
The science fiction movie that best illustrated this type of approach was the 2016 movie “Arrival”.
https://www.amazon.com/Arrival-Amy-Adams/dp/B01LTHYE04
McKenna was a great thinker and linguist, with a deep understanding of philosophy, science, technology, mathematics, and history. His intelligence and eloquence made me wonder for while whether psychedelics might be the key to unlocking the potential of the brain. And maybe there is something to that, but when I’ve listened to his brother, Dennis, speak I realized that Terence had unique gifts that would have been evident with or without his experiences with those drugs.
One of his many famous quotes puts your observation about language this way:
“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.”
Thanks for reminding me about “Arrival”. When I watched it I was greatly distracted and missed so much that I always intended to go back and watch it again. I’m going to make a point to do that.
You may be interested in this podcast if you have not heard it—most people had no clue what McLuhan was talking about—McKenna explains what is was and why it was and is so important:
https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-560-mckennas-thoughts-about-marshall-mcluhan/
That was quite an interesting podcast. I’ll have to take a look at some of McLuhan’s writings.
Ping for PL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.