Day 277 of 365 - Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy - Part 2
Psychiatry has not been having great success in treating many types of mental illness. Many of the typical diagnoses of depression, anxiety, addiction, and obsession are thought to perhaps be a sort of malfunction of the area of the brain referred to in the last post, the default mode network. They might be considered products of a stuck brain caught in patterns of rumination.
Mental illness causes huge suffering and is also a massive cost to society. Incidence is only increasing year by year and medicine is not becoming any more effective at treating it. New tools and innovations are needed.
Various private mental health practitioners have been experimenting with clients for some time using psychedelics to reset the brain and open the mind up to a new way of thinking about behavior change. Now, through private funding, there are some FDA approved studies happening at some American universities to study the effects of psychedelics paired with psychotherapy for persistent conditions of addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Pilot studies are showing interesting results.
For these studies, there is an intense period of psychotherapy before, during and after the assisted use of carefully dosed psychedelics. The 'brain reset' which occurs is thought to happen when the default mode network is suppressed. During the psychedelic experience, parts of the brain that don't normally communicate, network. The ego is essentially broken down and one has a more meaningful experience of consciousness. The recipient acquires a new perspective on life, an awareness of a more objective truth of their life. After the experience their sense of connection to others is restored and they are more open to techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with better results. There can be a 6 month benefit with just one treatment, apparently.
The assisted treatment process is intense, but still much shorter term than most traditional treatments. Thus, as a business model, there is a big challenge. It threatens the established forms of treatment of so many mental illnesses. Drug companies in the U.S. are not funding these studies because these natural substances cannot be patented. It is private funding which is bringing the research forward.
Other notable clinical trials are interesting too. For example, there are trials going on using MDMA (Ecstasy) in treating cases of severe post-traumatic stress disorder. In guided treatment using this substance, the consciousness is not radically altered. The amygdala, the fight/flight area in the midbrain, is disarmed in a way that decreases the intense charge of very difficult memories so that they can be examined and then reconsolidated. This has been helpful, for example to veterans and also to survivors of sexual abuse.
A small company, COMPASS Pathways, is doing psilocybin therapy trials with treatment resistant depression in both North America and Europe and are trying to sell their approach to clinics and national health services with training modules for therapists in a way to make psychedelic assisted treatment more economical. The FDA has encouraged research for cancer and anxiety studies and recently one for major depression. The culture is slowly changing but it will take new thinking to make it work.
This kind of treatment is not a panacea for all mental illness though. It works best as a guided and assisted experience for the disorders related to stuck and rigid patterns, like the depression, anxiety, addiction and obsessive conditions mentioned before. It would not be a good kind of treatment for a condition like schizophrenia, for example, where the mind is already operating in a scattered mode and would benefit from more order.
However, for the conditions of rigid mind, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy may offer a shortcut to the same kind of state achieved by years of meditation, a restoration of a sense of meaningful connection to humanity that may have been lost, and lasting insight about oneself. That sure seems worth investigating to me.
Mental illness causes huge suffering and is also a massive cost to society. Incidence is only increasing year by year and medicine is not becoming any more effective at treating it. New tools and innovations are needed.
Various private mental health practitioners have been experimenting with clients for some time using psychedelics to reset the brain and open the mind up to a new way of thinking about behavior change. Now, through private funding, there are some FDA approved studies happening at some American universities to study the effects of psychedelics paired with psychotherapy for persistent conditions of addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Pilot studies are showing interesting results.
For these studies, there is an intense period of psychotherapy before, during and after the assisted use of carefully dosed psychedelics. The 'brain reset' which occurs is thought to happen when the default mode network is suppressed. During the psychedelic experience, parts of the brain that don't normally communicate, network. The ego is essentially broken down and one has a more meaningful experience of consciousness. The recipient acquires a new perspective on life, an awareness of a more objective truth of their life. After the experience their sense of connection to others is restored and they are more open to techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with better results. There can be a 6 month benefit with just one treatment, apparently.
The assisted treatment process is intense, but still much shorter term than most traditional treatments. Thus, as a business model, there is a big challenge. It threatens the established forms of treatment of so many mental illnesses. Drug companies in the U.S. are not funding these studies because these natural substances cannot be patented. It is private funding which is bringing the research forward.
Other notable clinical trials are interesting too. For example, there are trials going on using MDMA (Ecstasy) in treating cases of severe post-traumatic stress disorder. In guided treatment using this substance, the consciousness is not radically altered. The amygdala, the fight/flight area in the midbrain, is disarmed in a way that decreases the intense charge of very difficult memories so that they can be examined and then reconsolidated. This has been helpful, for example to veterans and also to survivors of sexual abuse.
A small company, COMPASS Pathways, is doing psilocybin therapy trials with treatment resistant depression in both North America and Europe and are trying to sell their approach to clinics and national health services with training modules for therapists in a way to make psychedelic assisted treatment more economical. The FDA has encouraged research for cancer and anxiety studies and recently one for major depression. The culture is slowly changing but it will take new thinking to make it work.
This kind of treatment is not a panacea for all mental illness though. It works best as a guided and assisted experience for the disorders related to stuck and rigid patterns, like the depression, anxiety, addiction and obsessive conditions mentioned before. It would not be a good kind of treatment for a condition like schizophrenia, for example, where the mind is already operating in a scattered mode and would benefit from more order.
However, for the conditions of rigid mind, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy may offer a shortcut to the same kind of state achieved by years of meditation, a restoration of a sense of meaningful connection to humanity that may have been lost, and lasting insight about oneself. That sure seems worth investigating to me.
Comments
Post a Comment