United States: Psilocybin-assisted therapy could help up to almost 5.6 million Americans with major depression like severe depression, offering a new treatment option. Researchers found that more than half of patients with depression could be eligible for this kind of therapy if it’s approved by the FDA. If it gets approval, it could also change how depression is treated and reduce the need for long-term antidepressant drugs.
Acupuncture. Ketamine infusions. With electroshock or electroconvulsive treatment. At the present time, the only available treatment for those diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) or Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD) may seem more like a horrible ordeal or expensive way besides medication.
But one truly revolutionary finding of a study conducted by Emory University indicates that psilocybin therapeutic intervention could potentially reach more than 5 million individuals in America should it receive FDA approval.
The implications of the findings are that there is both a national need for therapies with psilocybin – the psychoactive chemical found active in magic mushrooms– and that there is information which elected officials, insurance companies, and public health agencies would have to know to effectively facilitate psilocybin-assisted therapy or PSIL-AT.
The existing source of participants was national data from patients seeking MDD and TRD treatment, and the exclusion criteria pertaining to comorbidities including mania, heart failure, and diabetes precluded those patients who would be medically unsuitable for the therapy.
These results suggest that between 56% and 62% of patients with MDD and TRD, or 5.1 – 5.6 million people, would qualify for PSIL-AT and should be offered the treatment.
“This information is important to understand because most of the present interest in psychedelic-based treatments is focused on how these drugs might work in randomised controlled trials, and not on what might happen if these new treatments were introduced,” reveals Fayzan Rab, the author of the study and the student of the Emory University’s School of Medicine.
“Thus, our study is one of the first works that talk about the broader impact of increasing access to psilocybin therapy for Americans.” Rab also noted that psilocybin treatment still has a breakthrough therapy with the FDA that will fast-track the Phase III clinical trial results given its prospects in treating d