Tag: mental health

New Mexico Senate Passes Bill To Create Psilocybin Therapy Program

The New Mexico Senate has passed a bill to establish a therapeutic psilocybin program in the state.

After clearing three separate committees over the past month, the legislation from Sen. Jeff Steinborn (D) was approved by the full chamber in a 33-4 vote on Wednesday, sending it to the House of Representatives.

If enacted, the Medical Psilocybin Act would allow patients with certain qualifying conditions to access the psychedelic and use it under the guidance of a licensed healthcare provider.

“I have come to know and become friends with combat veterans, physicians, providers and even practitioners who serve patients dealing with end-of-life anxiety,” Steinborn said on the floor. “This bill seeks to create a carefully calculated, thoughtful and patient program that would be developed by the Department of Health…to allow patients in a medical setting.”

“This is very different from cannabis. It could only be administered in a medical setting by licensed providers,” he said. “Sometimes it can be as effective as one treatment, and people can have long-term relief from that that they’re dealing with.”

The sponsor added that “we recognize the important need of continuing to do research, so we have the best program here, where the Department of Health is making the best available science decisions on medical setting, dosage, et cetera.”

Sen. Jay Block (R), a veteran himself, said that while he was initially “adamantly opposed” to the proposed reform, he has come to better understand the issue as a “right to try” policy for those with serious mental health conditions. He teared up during the Senate debate, recognizing veterans and others who he’s since learned benefitted from the psychedelic.

An amendment from Sen. Katy Huhigg (D) was adopted on the floor to clarify that the use of federally approved psilocybin would be allowed under the state law, but that such products would not be further regulated by the state.

The amendment would also remove a requirement that the department develop “qualifying conditions” for producers and clinicians, add a health care provider to the advisory board that would be created by the bill and strike language the sponsor described as “redundant.”

The measure says its purpose “is to allow the beneficial use of psilocybin in a regulated system for alleviating qualified medical conditions,” including major treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, substance use disorders and end-of-life care. The state Department of Health would be able to approve additional conditions.

Therapy would consist of a preparation session, an administration session and a follow-up integration session.

The state health department would be responsible for establishing guidelines around training for clinicians and producers, including dosage, approved settings for administration, production and storage protocols and other best practices. State officials would also license producers to grow mushrooms and process psilocybin.

Synthetic psilocybin and synthetic analogs of the substance would not be allowed under the proposal.

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Nevada Senators Take Up Resolution Calling On Congress To Reschedule Psychedelics And Streamline Research

Nevada senators took up a joint resolution on Tuesday that calls on Congress to reschedule certain psychedelics, provide protections for individuals using the substances in compliance with state law and streamline research.

As the Nevada legislature pushes forward with psychedelics reform, the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee discussed the resolution from Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D), hearing testimony from experts in the field.

“It is very much a grassroots, bipartisan issue. It is a Nevada issue,” Nguyen said in her opening remarks. “This is such an important issue. And this may seem like it’s an innocuous [resolution] where we’re sending a letter, but it is super important that we as a state send a message to the federal government—send a message to Washington, D.C.—that we need to start helping our community.”

“We have a mental health crisis. I don’t think you go into a committee room where you don’t hear about this,” she said. “This is just another solution to a problem that we have across our state.”

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Psychedelics Have ‘Promising Medical Applications,’ Congressional Watchdog Agency Says, But Research Challenges Remain

A federal agency has published a short report on the medical use of psychedelics, finding that their ability to “change a person’s perceptions and sense of self” can make for “promising medical applications.”

The paper, from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), says there’s a need for further research, but it also notes that because psychedelics such as LSD, MDMA and psilocybin remain Schedule I controlled substances, securing permission to carry out that research can be a challenge.

“To conduct research on these drugs, scientists need to follow several steps,” the report from GAO, which is often referred to as Congress’s “watchdog,” states in a section about ongoing challenges. “These include obtaining permission from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, finding clinical grade drugs to test, and identifying appropriate spaces in which to test and store these drugs.”

“Difficulties associated with conducting large, blind trials of psychedelics have limited researchers’ ability to determine the safety and effectiveness of these drugs,” GAO continues, “which is required for them to gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA approval is generally required before prescription drugs can be marketed for sale in the U.S.”

Despite the obstacles, the paper acknowledges that hundreds of clinical trials have investigated psychedelics as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.

“Between 2015 and early 2025, over 340 trials on psychedelics began or were completed,” it says. “For example, one study found that psilocybin reduced depression symptoms more than escitalopram, an SSRI.”

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Can Kennedy Save Kids from Psychiatric Ravage?

President Trump issued an executive order last week creating a Make America Healthy Again Commission, to be chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Among other targets, the commission will examine “prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs], antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.”

Kennedy has been outspoken on the danger of SSRIs, linking them to school shootings and stating that members of his family “had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin.”

Kennedy’s views mortify the mainstream media. The Washington Post did a hefty piece portraying Kennedy’s commission as more dangerous than any drugs prescribed to children. To discover the absolute truth, the Post turned to the CEO of the American Psychiatric Association, who assured the Post that “psychiatric drugs can be very effective and generally are given to children carefully after front-line treatments such as talk therapy.”

Decades ago, who would have expected an apology for Adderall, Prozac, Zoloft, and similar drugs to sound like a pitch for Kellogg’s breakfast cereals? Prescription drug use is skyrocketing. Antidepressant prescriptions for young Americans aged 12 to 25 increased by 66% between 2016 and 2022.

The New York Times reported last year that many young people were left worse off thanks to “mental health interventions.” The Times showcased psychiatric “prevalence inflation” – a vast increase in reported mental illness among teenagers who are encouraged to view normal feelings as grave maladies requiring intervention. Oxford University psychologist Lucy Foulkes observed that school programs are “creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional.”

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Liberal Women Are Lonely And Unhappy According To Recent Polls

The news must come as a shock to most, but it turns out that liberal women in the US are very unhappy.  A recently released poll from the American Family Survey held in 2024 shows that only 12% of liberal women are satisfied with their lives and that they are three times more likely to experience loneliness compared to conservative women.

The data reinforces a number of surveys over the years which reveal a continuing plunge in relative happiness among progressive western women despite their admission that they have more independence than ever before.

Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia and fellow at the Institute for Family Studies who analyzed the survey’s data, said he believes there are a couple of reasons why conservative young women are more likely to be happier than their liberal counterparts. 

“We’ve seen in the research that conservative women tend to be more likely to embrace a sense of agency and to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces,” he told Fox News Digital.  “They’re also less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns,” and “more likely to think of themselves as captains of their own fate,” Wilcox added.

The survey also notes that conservative women are more likely to accept biological and social differences between males and females.  The ideal was thought to be common sense for thousands of years but has come under fire from feminists in the past decade as a “social construct of the patriarchy”.  The deconstruction of societal norms has been so pervasive, governments across the western world have tried to encode intersectional feminist taboos into law and punish people who remain skeptical.  

One side effect of the rise of feminist authority that liberals apparently did not expect is the decline in relative happiness of women.  The issue was fist noticed around 2009 when a study out of the University of Pennsylvania stunned the mainstream media – Despite decades of greater access to the jobs market, institutional influence and life options since the 1970s, young women have become increasingly less happy compared to their counterparts of past generations.  Though the study avoids addressing the problem of feminism directly, it does suggest that modern constructs may play a major role in creating anxiety for women.  

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Mental Health Experts See Massive Increase In “Despair And Burn Out” Among Democrats

Leftist outlet Axios has published an article claiming that mental health experts are seeing a huge increase in patients who are Democrat voters complaining of “despair and burn out” in the wake of President Trump winning the election and taking office for the second time.

The piece claims that the worn out whiners are whinging about not being able to keep up with the pace of Trump’s “rapid fire policies.”

The article notes “Mental health professionals say even people who don’t see themselves as directly affected by administration actions are feeling frazzled by the dizzying pace and Trump’s enduring ability to command attention.”

“They may feel it through the venting of a spouse, the distress of a neighbor with a trans child or an anxious friend who works for a government contractor,” it hilariously adds.

The piece further states that Andrea Bonior, a Georgetown University psychology professor “said she’s seen an uptick in patients, particularly Democrats, expressing a sense of burnout, guilt and despair at losing an old way of life.”

It adds that “Bonior pointed to federal workers who aren’t sure if they’ll be let go as well as others concerned about their immigration status or worried about loved ones whose refugee flights were canceled.”

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CBD Is A ‘Promising Candidate’ For Treating Depression With ‘Few Side Effects,’ New Scientific Review Concludes

A new scientific review says there’s “accumulating” evidence that the marijuana component CBD “has antidepressant properties in humans and animals with few side effects” and may also aid in the reduction of inflammation and formation of new brain cells.

“In summary,” says the manuscript, newly accepted by the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, “there is growing evidence that CBD may be a promising candidate for the treatment of depression.”

The review notes that while the anti-depressant effects of the cannabinoid have been previously reported, the mechanisms of action behind those effects are still poorly understood. “Therefore, this paper reviews the molecular targets, pharmacokinetics, and safety of CBD,” it says.

Authors from the departments of pharmacology at Nantong University, the First People’s Hospital of Yancheng and the Jiangyin Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine—all in Jiangsu, China—looked at recently published papers on experimental and clinical studies around CBD, concluding that effects seem to be linked to the cannabinoid’s role in reducing inflammation and enhancing neurogenesis.

As for the cannabinoids’ targets in the human body, authors wrote that “receptor mechanisms underlying CBD’s effects are very complex and involve in multiple receptors including CB1, CB2, GPR55, 5-HT1A, and PPARγ receptors.”

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First Patient Dosed In Historic Study On Whether LSD Effectively Treats Anxiety

For the first time ever, researchers are administering LSD to patients in a Phase 3 clinical trial. The new study focuses on whether the psychedelic can be used to effectively treat generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

Drugmaker MindMed says that the trial, dubbed Voyage, is eventually expected to enroll about 200 people in the U.S. and will compare the effects of its proprietary LSD product to a placebo. A second Phase 3 trial, called Panorama, will also be conducted in both the U.S. and Europe and is expected to kick off in the first half of next year.

“Today marks a pivotal moment in our journey towards advancing a novel treatment option for the 20 million people in the U.S. living with GAD,” MindMed’s chief medical officer, Daniel R. Karlin, said in a statement released on Monday. “Building on our scientifically rigorous Phase 2b study, which demonstrated efficacy that far exceeds today’s standard of care and a favorable tolerability profile, our Phase 3 studies are designed to adhere to the highest clinical and ethical standards and are in alignment with guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

In March of this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted MindMed’s LSD product “breakthrough therapy” status as a treatment for GAD. That followed a Phase 2 trial showing that a single oral dose of LSD led to “clinically and statistically significant” reductions in anxiety scores 12 weeks after administration, with 65 percent of participants showing a clinical response and 48 percent in clinical remission following the treatment.

Breakthrough drug status is meant to recognize the therapeutic promise of an emerging substance or therapy as well as speed the research and development of treatments that fill an unmet need. MDMA and psilocybin have also previously been awarded the designation.

The new research will use dissolvable oral tablets of the drug, MM120 ODT, or lysergide D-tartrate, which MindMed describes as a “proprietary and pharmaceutically optimized form of LSD.”

The first Phase 3 study, Voyage, will last a year and consist of two parts: a 12-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to see how LSD affects anxiety symptoms. That will be followed by a 40-week extension period, during which participants can access open-label treatment with the drug based on the severity of their anxiety symptoms.

LSD has a noticeable subjective effect on sensation and cognition, which means it’s likely participants will know whether they received the psychedelic or a non-psychoactive placebo.

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School-Based Mental Health Diagnosing, A Prescription for Disaster

A Biden-Harris Administration information paper explains that “our country is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis impacting people of all ages.

In 2021, two in five American adults reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression and forty-four percent of high school students reported struggling with persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.”

Rather than ask why the nation is in the throes of a national mental health crisis, the Biden-Harris Administration, with the help of a useless Congress, decided to throw money at the “mental health crisis.”

That’s right, our exalted leaders haven’t got a clue why Americans are depressed, sad, anxious, and hopeless and, in fact, don’t care to find out. But the President and Congress believe that money will fix the “crisis.”

And just to make the damage as widespread as possible, they’ll enact mandatory programs that target vulnerable, naive school kids.

Does this sound like responsible leadership? No. Especially when one considers all the facts. Short of ending all efforts to bring mental health diagnosing and treatment into the public school system, AbleChild predicts that within five years the mental health “crisis” will increase exponentially with devastating effects for decades. Here’s how it works to get mental health patients cradle to grave.

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Psilocybin therapy offers relief from multiple psychiatric symptoms in cancer patients

New research published in Nature Mental Health indicates that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy may offer comprehensive mental health benefits for individuals experiencing cancer-related distress. The study found that this treatment not only reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression but also reduced interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, obsession-compulsion, and somatization. These findings suggest that psilocybin could provide an innovative approach to addressing the profound psychological challenges associated with cancer.

Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is a relatively new approach that combines the administration of psilocybin, a psychedelic compound derived from certain mushrooms, with guided psychotherapy. Unlike traditional psychiatric medications, which are often taken daily and may take weeks to show effects, research suggests that psilocybin can produce rapid and lasting relief after just one or two carefully supervised sessions.

These sessions typically include preparation with a trained therapist, the psilocybin experience itself in a safe and supportive setting, and follow-up therapy to help process and integrate the experience. This method has shown promise in treating mood and anxiety disorders, particularly for patients facing existential challenges such as life-threatening illnesses.

For cancer patients, the psychological toll can be overwhelming, often manifesting as depression, anxiety, and emotional distress that significantly affect quality of life and clinical outcomes. Standard treatments, including therapy and antidepressant medications, frequently fall short in effectiveness and may be accompanied by delayed onset or undesirable side effects. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy offers a potential alternative, with rapid and sustained benefits.

While prior research has demonstrated psilocybin’s ability to reduce anxiety and depression in cancer patients, many individuals with cancer experience additional mental health symptoms, such as interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, somatization, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. These symptoms exacerbate the emotional burden of cancer, yet their response to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy had not been systematically investigated.

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