Study Shows That Psychedelic Drugs Decrease Depressive Symptoms

September 2, 2020 14:54:31

The latest research gives preliminary confirmation that psychedelic drugs can better an individual’s mental health by making them more accepting of experiences that are distressing. Frontiers in Psychiatry published the study, adding to an already expanding body of literature which shows that utilizing substances such as psilocybin can improve symptoms of depression.

Therapy using psychedelics has shown a lot of potential for treating various mental health disorders, such as major depressive disorder, substance use disorders and distress related to a life-threatening ailment.

As compared to pharmacological use of drugs to treat different mental health issues, psychedelic therapy results last anywhere between a few months to years after treatment has stopped. Despite there not being enough understanding of how therapy using psychedelics work to trigger results in reliable mental health advancements in various conditions, it is still important that we acknowledge that psychedelic therapy is beneficial to many.

Researchers paid extra attention to experiential avoidance, which is essentially the inclination of an individual to avoid unpleasant feelings and thoughts. Individuals who measured high on experiential avoidance agreed with statements like ‘I go out of my way to avoid uncomfortable situations’.

The researchers used 104 people recruited through online advertisements who planned on using any psychedelic substance and an additional 254 who were planning to take part in a psychedelic ceremony for the study. For both group samples, experiential avoidance, suicidal ideation and measures of depression severity were done a week before using a psychedelic substance and 4 weeks thereafter.

Richard Zeifman, a research intern of the Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research, and his colleagues discovered that psychedelics use in both non-ceremonial and ceremonial surroundings was linked to a decline in experiential avoidance, thus decreasing suicidal ideation and depression severity in the 4 weeks after the psychedelics were used. The psychedelic substances that were most popular in the study were LSD, psilocybin or magic mushrooms and ayahuasca.

The study’s findings indicated that the reason why therapy using psychedelics had positive effects was because they made individuals more accepting of what they were feeling, their thoughts as well as their memories which reduced their avoidance.

The study’s results also provided more support on how avoidance affected an individual’s mental health in a negative way.

However, it should be noted that living under a banner of avoidance is never the answer. The only way out of the funk is through it.

Psychedelics companies like Cybin Corp. will be pleased to note that science is beginning to explain the effects which have always been attributed to psychedelic substances.

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