Tag: mental health

Trump Signs Order To Accelerate Legal Access To Psychedelics For Patients With Mental Health Conditions

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at expanding and expediting research on the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, a move aimed at making substances such as psilocybin, ibogaine, LSD and MDMA more readily available to patients in clinical settings.

The move will “dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs,” Trump said.

The order, which the president signed in the Oval Office on Saturday alongside federal health officials, advocates and the podcaster Joe Rogan, directs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue new guidance for researchers on conducting clinical trials on psychedelics.

“In many cases, these experimental treatments have shown life-changing potential for those suffering from severe mental illness and depression—including our cherished veterans,” Trump said.

Steps taken under the order will “clear away unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, improve data sharing among the FDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and facilitate fast rescheduling of any psychedelic drugs that become FDA approved,” the president said.

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‘Transgender’ adolescents have worse mental health after ‘reassignment’, study shows

Adolescents who claim to be “transgender” have significantly worse mental health after being subjected to “medical gender reassignment”, a large Finnish study has found.

The study, published in medical journal Acta Paediatrica on April 4, found a “significantly higher” incidence of mental disorders after so-called medical gender reassignment, which includes the use of irreversible and dangerous genital surgery, hormones and puberty blockers.

The researchers noted that medical gender reassignment “is often suggested to be beneficial, even vital, for the mental health of adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria”, but that the evidence supporting the popular claim was “very limited”.

The study compared 2,083 individuals who were referred to gender identity clinics in Finland before the age of 23 between 1996 and 2019 to a matched control group, and found much higher psychiatric morbidity both before (47.9% vs. 15.3%) and more than two years after (61.3% vs. 14.2%) referral.

Among those who underwent medical gender reassignment, “psychiatric morbidity increased markedly during follow-up”, the study found, rising from 9.8% to 60.7% in males who underwent “feminising” reassignment, and 21.6% to 54.5% in females in “masculinising gender reassignment”.

“After adjusting for prior psychiatric treatment, all gender-referred adolescents had similarly elevated risks of psychiatric morbidity, with hazard ratios approximately three times higher than female controls and five times higher than male controls,” the researchers found.

“These adolescents had markedly higher psychiatric morbidity than controls before and after referral, with treatment needs often persisting and even intensifying after medical interventions – on some, they might even have a negative impact.”

The study also found that adolescents referred after 2010 “displayed noticeably more psychiatric morbidity than those referred earlier”, which the researchers said suggested increasing referrals of adolescents with severe mental health issues to gender identity services.

The researchers said the “considerable increases” in need for psychiatric treatment among those “seeking change towards female” could be due to the use of the hormone estrogen, which can cause depressive symptoms, but noted that similar increases were seen among those given testosterone.

“Masculinising hormones may temporarily improve mood, and testosterone-related bodily changes – typically emerging within a few month – could be expected to alleviate gender dysphoria and subsequently psychiatric treatment needs,” the researchers stated.

“However, psychiatric treatment needs were also markedly increased among those who obtained masculinising gender reassignment. Subsequent morbidity burden may also arise from treatments not meeting the expectations placed on them.”

The researchers concluded that the results showed a need for further studies into why medical gender reassignment appears linked to mental health deterioration, and called for more thorough psychiatric assessments before referral.

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SURPRISE: Justice Jackson Gets NUKED by Fellow Leftist Justice Kagan For Writing This Insane Dissent in Case Regarding Conversion Therapy Ban for LGBTQ Minors

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has become such an embarrassing spectacle on the Supreme Court that even her fellow leftists appear to be tiring of her.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 8-1 against Colorado’s conversion therapy ban for LGBTQ minors. Jackson was the lone dissenter.

The lawsuit was filed by Christian talk therapist Kaley Chiles, who argued that Colorado’s ban on her talk therapy methods violated her First Amendment rights.

In an insane 35-page dissent, Jackson essentially said that therapists like Chiles should not have the same free speech rights as other Americans.

“Professional medical speech does not intersect with the marketplace of ideas: ‘In the context of medical practice, we insist upon competence, not debate,’” she wrote. “Treatment standards exist in America.”

“It threatens to impair States’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect,” she added. “It extends the Constitution into uncharted territory in an utterly irrational fashion. And it ultimately risks grave harm to Americans’ health and well-being.”

She also attacked the Court for ‘playing with fire’, which could ‘burn Americans.’

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New Mexico Will Fund Psychedelic Treatment for Patients on Low Incomes

On March 11, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) signed the budget for the upcoming fiscal year into law, and in doing so, underlined the state’s position at the vanguard of alternative mental health treatments.

Embedded within the finalized appropriation is a late addition: a pioneering directive to allocate $630,000 to the state’s Psilocybin Treatment Equity Fund, newly established under New Mexico’s Medical Psilocybin Act.

Confirmation of the funding represents a big step forward in the state’s efforts to integrate psychedelic-assisted therapies into its broader behavioral health infrastructure. And the formal allocation of state funds to pay for psychedelic treatments for patients on low incomes is seen as a world first. 

State Senator Jeff Steinborn (D) was one of the legislative champions of the 2025 legalization of psilocybin for medical purposes. He emphasized that the state’s financial support is what will ultimately dictate the efficacy and fairness of the entire enterprise.

“I’m excited that New Mexico has taken the next step in support of our Medical Psilocybin Treatment Program,” Sen. Steinborn told Filter following the budget’s approval. “An important part of our state law was the creation of an equity fund, to ensure all New Mexicans who qualify for the program would have access to it, not just those with financial resources. Through this funding provided by the legislature and governor, as well as additional investment in research into end-of-life anxiety, we are working to launch the best evidence-based program possible.”

In addition to the equity fund allocation, the budget authorizes a supplementary $300,000 earmarked for clinical research at the University of New Mexico into treating end-of-life anxiety with psilocybin—the hallucinogenic compound found in certain mushrooms. 

New Mexico will be a critical testing ground for medical access to psychedelics as it navigates the challenges of implementation.

Its schedule is ambitious. In December 2025, state health officials announced concrete plans to launch the program by the end of r 2026. This means rolling out the regulatory and clinical framework a full year ahead of the initially imposed legislative deadline.

When the program opens its doors to patients, New Mexico will become the third state to launch a state-regulated psilocybin program after Oregon and Colorado. However, while Oregon and Colorado have adopted models that allow for supported adult use and broader therapeutic access outside of strict medical confines, New Mexico’s program will be fundamentally clinical and medicalized.It’s designed to provide highly supervised treatment for specific, severe qualifying medical conditions—including major treatment-resistant depression, severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic substance use disorders, and specialized end-of-life care.

But in the United States, a medicalized model immediately raises questions around whether people will be able to access it on the basis of need, rather than ability to pay. That’s what the Psilocybin Treatment Equity Fund is intended to address.

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Researchers ‘surprised’ by the brain benefits of cannabis usage in adults over 40

Pass the pot to Grandma — her brain might thank you.

A new study is challenging long-held assumptions about cannabis, finding that middle-aged and older adults who use the drug may actually see some brain and cognitive benefits.

The twist comes as cannabis use is climbing among older Americans. Research shows that nearly 1 in 5 people ages 50 to 64 reported using marijuana in the past year, along with 5.9% of those 65 and older.

That’s notable because research on cannabis and the brain has historically zeroed in on adolescents, not aging adults.

“More older adults are using cannabis. It’s more widely available and is being used for different reasons than in younger folks — such as for sleep and chronic pain,” Dr. Anika Guha, a clinical psychologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

“Plus, people are living longer. We have to ask, ‘What are the long-term effects of cannabis use as we continue to age?’”

To dig deeper, Guha and her colleagues analyzed data from 26,362 adults ages 40 to 77, with an average age of 55, all living in the UK.

Participants answered detailed questions about their cannabis use, underwent MRI scans to assess their brain structure and completed a series of cognitive tests.

The researchers zeroed in on brain regions packed with CB1 — a cannabinoid receptor they theorized would be especially affected by cannabis.

One key focus was the hippocampus, which contains a high concentration of these receptors and plays a critical role in memory as we age. It’s also a brain region closely linked to dementia.

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The Information War Over Antidepressants

Stat News hit the ethical and scientific bottom two weeks ago when they published an article by Stephen B. Soumerai, professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Christine Y. Lu, professor at the Sydney Pharmacy School of the University of Sydney.1

I have rarely seen so much disinformation in so few words, only 1,220. I reproduce the article in its entirety, in italics, with my comments. 

I do not consider Stat News a reliable news source. It has corporate ties, and despite its name, it has nothing to do with statistics, which I thought for ten years till I looked it up. Stat is short for Statim, which means immediate in Latin. 

The two professors have forgotten that professors have an obligation towards society to be honest conveyors of science. Their article is propaganda of the worst kind, which is apparent already in its title and subtitle: 

RFK Jr.’s war on antidepressants is coming – and it will cost lives. Kennedy’s rhetoric is not only based on bad science, it fuels distrust in mental health treatments.

It is primitive and a no-go for scientists to raise their voice by using war rhetoric but they continue with this in the first sentence of the article: 

While his war on vaccines may be getting more attention, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is coming for another important medical tool: antidepressants. In November, he posted on X that the CDC is “finally confronting the long-taboo question of whether SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs contribute to mass violence.” We fear that in 2026, he may turn his rhetoric into action.

Kennedy has not started a war on vaccines.2-6 As health secretary, he has taken rational, much needed, and evidence-based initiatives. He fired the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because it rubber-stamped all proposals that came to them and because some members had conflicts of interest in relation to vaccine manufacturers and other drug companies; dropped the much too broad recommendations for the Covid vaccine; cut funding for mRNA vaccines; stopped recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns; and reduced the huge childhood vaccine schedule that made the US an outlier compared to Europe. 

Moreover, it is well documented that SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs can cause violence.7-11 For antidepressants, the violence is dose-related,11 and it is highly relevant to study their role in mass shootings. Unfortunately, the authorities routinely refuse to release information about what drugs the mass murderers were on. It has become taboo to mention that psychiatric drugs kill people, indeed to such an extent that they are the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer (much because elderly people may lose balance, break their hip, and die).12 

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UK Asylum Seekers to Be Given Taxpayer-Funded Personal Therapists: Report

The British government will reportedly provide taxpayer-funded therapists for alleged asylum seekers who entered the country illegally.

The Home Office has commandeered the Cameron Barracks in Inverness, Scotland, to accommodate around 300 male asylum seekers as it seeks to transition away from the practice of block-booking hotels throughout the country to house illegals.

However, the Cameron Barracks plans have also sparked controversy after The Telegraph reported this week that the illegals set to be housed at the site will have their own dedicated therapists provided to them at taxpayer expense.

Highland councillors were told this week that having therapists provided at the site would mean that the illegals would not have to access local NHS services.

“Primary health care will be available on-site, including mental health support. Funding for these services will be provided by the Home Office to minimise impact on local GP surgeries and NHS resources,” they were told.

However, some have noted that this would effectively mean that illegal migrants would be given preferential treatment, given that people in the area often wait around five months before being able to see an NHS therapist.

Thomas Kerr, a spokesman for Reform UK, said: “The Cameron Barracks is simply the wrong location for a facility like this. Local people are rightly angry and demanding their voices be heard.

“To now learn that taxpayers will also be paying for mental health support for people who have come to this country illegally is a massive slap in the face.”

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AI Shows Symptoms of Anxiety, Trauma, PTSD – And It’s Ruining Your Mental Health Too

Grok, Gemini and ChatGPT exhibit symptoms of poor mental health according to a new study that put various AI models through weeks of therapy-style questioning. Some are now curious about “AI mental health”, but the real warning here is about how unstable these systems – which are already being used by one in three UK adults for mental health support – become in emotionally charged conversations. Millions of people are turning to AI as replacement therapists, and in the last year alone we’ve seen a spike in lawsuits connecting chatbot interactions with self-harm and suicide cases in vulnerable users.

The emerging picture is not that machines are suffering or mentally unwell, but that a product being used for mental-health support is fundamentally misleading, escalating, and reinforcing dangerous thoughts. 

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Dystopian Horror: ONE IN FOUR British Teens Turn To AI ‘Therapy’ Bots For Mental Health

One in four British teenagers have resorted to AI chatbots for mental health support over the past year, exposing the chilling reality of a society where machines replace human connection amid crumbling government services. 

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) surveyed 11,000 kids aged 13 to 16 in England and Wales, revealing that over half sought some form of mental health aid, with a quarter leaning on AI. 

Victims or perpetrators of violence were even more likely to confide in these digital voids. As The Independent reported, “The YEF said AI chatbots could appeal to struggling young people who feel it is safer and easier to speak to an AI chatbot anonymously at any time of day rather than speaking to a professional.”

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A Few ‘Laughing Gas’ Breaths May Rapidly Lift Depression, Major Study Finds

Nitrous oxide is emerging as a surprisingly fast-acting option for people with major or treatment-resistant depression.

New research shows that even a single inhaled dose can ease symptoms within a day, while repeated sessions may create longer-lasting improvements.

Nitrous Oxide Shows Potential for Fast Depression Relief

Patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, including many who have not improved with first-line antidepressants, may benefit from short-term treatment with nitrous oxide. This conclusion comes from a large meta-analysis led by the University of Birmingham.

A new paper published in eBioMedicine on November 30 reviewed the most reliable clinical data available to examine how medically administered nitrous oxide (N2O) may offer rapid relief from depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD).

Understanding TRD and Why New Options Are Needed

TRD refers to depression that remains insufficiently controlled after a person has tried two different antidepressants. According to a previous study* by the same research team, about 48% of UK patients see limited benefit from current treatments, making the search for alternative approaches increasingly important.

To explore this further, researchers from the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford, and Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust examined seven clinical trials and four protocol papers produced by scientists around the world. These studies focused on how nitrous oxide, a gas commonly used as pain relief in medical settings, might help treat depressive disorders such as MDD, TRD, and bipolar depression.

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