Can mushrooms treat depression?

The effectiveness of psychedelics

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression will become the second leading cause of disease by 2020.

Without effective scaled-up treatment, a staggering 12 billion working days — or 50 million years of work — will be lost to depression and anxiety disorders each year between now and 2030. It puts the annual loss to the global economy at $925bn (£651bn).

While drugs such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been promoted by medical science, reviews find these drugs don’t work any better than placebo (i.e. an effect size of around 30%).

Psychedelic therapy using #psilocybin based mushrooms shows promise in the fight against #depression. Psilocybin treats depression not by suppressing emotionality by increasing emotional connection.

This is remarkable considering this kind of mechanism is actually the opposite effect of major SSRI antidepressants used to treat the condition.

While these results are encouraging, it’s important to remember that anxiety and depression are behavioural conditions– not diseases of the brain.

This reality suggests researchers will need to develop interventions that combine tailored chemical agents with sociological factors.