Should I be hopeful or cautious about? I've suffered from MDD since childhood (teenage years to be exact), but I've also been diagnosed on the schizophrenic-spectrum (SAD to be exact), so I'm not sure if this can be counted as good news for me as these are still, well, psychedlics.
>Psilocybin, a drug found in magic mushrooms, appears to free up the brains of people with severe depression in a way that other antidepressants do not, a study has found.
>The results, based on brain scans of 60 people, mean the drug could treat depression in a unique way, the researchers say.
>Psychedelics are being studied to treat a range of mental health disorders.
>Patients with depression are warned not to take psilocybin on their own.
>A synthetic form of the drug is tested on people in trials under strict medical conditions, with psychological support from experts provided before, during and after it is taken.
>Prof David Nutt, study author and head of the Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research, said the latest findings on psilocybin were "exciting" and "important".
>With depression, the brain can get stuck in a rut and locked into a particular negative way of thinking, he said.
>But when given psilocybin, people's brains opened up and became "more flexible and fluid" up to three weeks later.
>This could be seen in increased connections between regions of the brain when patients were scanned. These patients were more likely to experience an improvement in mood months later.
>Similar changes were not seen in the brains of people treated with a standard antidepressant.
>"This supports our initial predictions, and confirms psilocybin could be a real alternative approach to depression treatments," Prof Nutt said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61070591
>Psilocybin, a drug found in magic mushrooms, appears to free up the brains of people with severe depression in a way that other antidepressants do not, a study has found.
>The results, based on brain scans of 60 people, mean the drug could treat depression in a unique way, the researchers say.
>Psychedelics are being studied to treat a range of mental health disorders.
>Patients with depression are warned not to take psilocybin on their own.
>A synthetic form of the drug is tested on people in trials under strict medical conditions, with psychological support from experts provided before, during and after it is taken.
>Prof David Nutt, study author and head of the Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research, said the latest findings on psilocybin were "exciting" and "important".
>With depression, the brain can get stuck in a rut and locked into a particular negative way of thinking, he said.
>But when given psilocybin, people's brains opened up and became "more flexible and fluid" up to three weeks later.
>This could be seen in increased connections between regions of the brain when patients were scanned. These patients were more likely to experience an improvement in mood months later.
>Similar changes were not seen in the brains of people treated with a standard antidepressant.
>"This supports our initial predictions, and confirms psilocybin could be a real alternative approach to depression treatments," Prof Nutt said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61070591
