Dr Louise Jones, head of translational research at the MRC, said: “We now don’t have effective treatments for some people’s depression so we need to know more about how drugs such as psilocybin could be used for patient benefit”.
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Dr Carhart-Harris said the results were “encouraging” and larger trials were now needed. The most common treatments for depression are cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and antidepressants.
“That is pretty remarkable in the context of now available treatments”, says Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London and first author of the latest study, which is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.
The study consisted of a volunteer group of six men and six women who were diagnosed with “moderate-to-severe, unipolar, treatment-resistant major depression”. Most (11) had also received some form of psychotherapy. The first, given as a safety precaution, contained a low 10mg dose of the drug and the second a high 25mg dose.
“We haven’t proven anything [yet], we’ve just opened up a very important, potential new treatment”. Patients had an MRI scan the day after the therapeutic dose. At New York University, there’s an entire program looking at the implementation of psilocybin for different treatment options.
Researchers found that the “trip” for each participant started about 30-60 minutes in, peaked at 2-3 hours after the dosing, and subsides after about 6 hours.
While anxiety affected every patient, the treatment produced few adverse side effects.
Some reported confusion, nausea and headaches, while two people suffered brief episodes of mild paranoia. In 2014, it was shown that psylocibin, the active substance in the magic mushrooms inhibits the processing of negative emotions in the brain, helping to block out anxiety and depression. Eight of the 12 patients achieved full remission and were liberated from their depression temporarily. The researchers had to wait a year for ethical approval and 30 months for to get the drug from a company that had to get a special license.
The patients were then monitored during their five- to six-hour trips in “a treatment room created to be calming”. The authors also stress that most of the study participants were self-referred meaning they actively sought treatment, and may have expected some effect (5 had previously tried psilocybin before).
Professor Nutt, who was sacked as the Government’s drugs advisor in 2009 for his outspoken views, urged the Home Secretary to re-designate psilocybin from Schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act to better enable further clinical trials. They add that patients were carefully screened and given psychological support before, during and after the intervention, and that the study took place in a positive environment.
Some study participants were no longer depressed three months after taking two doses of the compound psilocybin.
Scientists from Imperial College London have published research suggesting a compound in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, may help treat depression.
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“The data at three month follow-up – a comparatively short time in patients with extensive illness duration – are promising but not completely compelling, with about half the group showing significant depressive symptoms”.
