Tag: mental health

Missouri GOP Lawmakers File Bills To Legalize Psilocybin Therapy And Fund Clinical Trials For 2024 Session

Missouri Republican lawmakers have pre-filed a pair of bills to legalize the medical use of psilocybin and require clinical trials exploring the therapeutic potential of the psychedelic.

Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder (R) and Rep. Aaron McMullen (R) introduced similar versions of the legislation for the 2024 session, setting the stage for further consideration of psychedelics reform in the Show-Me State.

Under both proposals, adults 21 or older who are diagnosed with a qualifying condition such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or substance misuse disorder could legally access laboratory-tested psilocybin. They also would need to be enrolled, or sought enrollment, in a Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) clinical trial involving the psychedelic.

The Senate version mirrors a separate House bill that advanced to the floor this year but was not ultimately enacted.

There are also numerous requirements for patients to provide DHSS with information about their diagnosis, the person who would be administering psilocybin and other details on the place and time of the treatment sessions.

Psilocybin could only be administered over a maximum of a one-year period, with the amount of the psychedelic used in that treatment capped at 150 milligrams, though qualifying patients could be also approved to continue for subsequent one-year periods.

Regulators, physicians and state agency officials would all be protected from legal consequences related to activity made lawful under the legislation.

Also, the legislation calls for DHSS to provide $2 million in grants to support “research on the use and efficacy of psilocybin.”

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People With Anxiety Report Better Sleep On Days They Use Marijuana Compared To Alcohol Or Nothing At All, Study Finds

People with anxiety experience better quality sleep on days when they use marijuana compared to days when they use alcohol or nothing at all, a new federally funded study has found.

For the study, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review, researchers at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University and University of Haifa analyzed the subjective sleep quality of 347 people who reported using cannabis to treat anxiety. They wanted to understand the different ways sleep was affected by the use of marijuana, alcohol, neither or both on a given day.

To that end, people participating in the study were asked to fill out daily surveys for 30 days, recounting their substance use and subjective sleep experience the night prior. Researchers compared outcomes from non-use days, cannabis-only days, alcohol-only days and co-use days.

“Compared to non-use, participants reported better sleep after cannabis-use-only and after co-use, but not after alcohol-use-only,” the authors, who received funding for the study from a National Institutes of Health grant, wrote.

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Health Benefits Provider Will Cover Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy In States Where It’s Legal

A Massachusetts company that bills itself as “the first and only licensed provider of psychedelic health plans” announced on Tuesday that it will cover psilocybin-assisted therapy in states where it’s legal.

“Given the evidence of effectiveness seen in clinical trials in the U.S. and elsewhere, we have decided to give our employers the option of including psilocybin-assisted therapy in their benefit plans,” said Sherry Rais, CEO and co-founder of Enthea, a third-party health insurance benefits administrator. “Oregon and Colorado have already legalized the use of psilocybin, and we expect others to do so next year.”

Enthea announced earlier this year that it would cover ketamine treatment nationwide. The nonprofit previously worked with soap company Dr. Bronner’s last year to offer psychedelic-assisted therapy to workers through their employee health plans.

Enthea said this week that it plans to expand its standards of care to include adult use of psilocybin “in combination with psychotherapeutic support.” The company expects to publish the change to its provider network sometime in the first quarter of next year.

The goal, Enthea said, is to be able to cover psilocybin-assisted treatment by mid-2024.

“We have had our eye on the potential benefits of psilocybin therapy since we founded our company,” Dan Rome, Enthea’s co-founder and chief medical officer, said in a press release. “We are very encouraged by published results as well as what we hear from practicing therapists, and are confident that this brings an important new option for combating mental illness.”

Enthea has said its services will expand further to include therapies with other substances, such as MDMA, “as they are approved.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated MDMA as a “breakthrough therapy” in 2017, and the substance is now on track for FDA consideration next year following successful Phase 3 clinical trials published in September in the journal Nature that found that MDMA-facilitated talk therapy reduced symptoms in patients with moderate to severe PTSD.

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Helicopter Parenting Hurts Your Kids’ Mental Health

That young people are suffering an explosion of mental health issues is no secret. Anxiety and depression are through the roof, and social scientists are scrambling to find a cause so that whatever is driving kids over the edge can be undone. Extensive use of social media and electronic devices—exacerbated by the isolation of pandemic-era lockdowns—has taken much of the blame. But recent research says that psychological distress more likely results from depriving kids of unsupervised freedom. That’s a larger problem that could take longer to fix.

“From 2009 to 2017, major depression among 20- to 21-year-olds more than doubled, rising from 7 percent to 15 percent,” Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, wrote in 2019. “Depression surged 69 percent among 16- to 17-year-olds. Serious psychological distress, which includes feelings of anxiety and hopelessness, jumped 71 percent among 18- to 25-year-olds from 2008 to 2017…. By 2017, one out of five 12- to 17-year-old girls had experienced major depression in the previous year.”

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Psychedelics plus psychotherapy can trigger rapid changes in the brain

The human brain can change—but usually only slowly and with great effort, such as when learning a new sport or foreign language, or recovering from a stroke. Learning new skills correlates with changes in the brain, as evidenced by neuroscience research with animals and functional brain scans in people. Presumably, if you master Calculus 1, something is now different in your brain. Furthermore, motor neurons in the brain expand and contract depending on how often they are exercised— a neuronal reflection of “use it or lose it.”

People may wish their brains could change faster—not just when learning new skills, but also when overcoming problems like anxiety, depression, and addictions.

Clinicians and scientists know there are times the brain can make rapid, enduring changes. Most often, these occur in the context of traumatic experiences, leaving an indelible imprint on the brain.

But positive experiences, which alter one’s life for the better, can occur equally as fast. Think of a spiritual awakening, a near-death experience or a feeling of awe in nature.

Social scientists call events like these psychologically transformative experiences or pivotal mental states. For the rest of us, they’re forks in the road. Presumably, these positive experiences quickly change some “wiring” in the brain.

How do these rapid, positive transformations happen? It seems the brain has a way to facilitate accelerated change. And here’s where it gets really interesting: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy appears to tap into this natural neural mechanism.

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America’s First ‘Shroom Clinic’ Opens In Oregon

America’s first licensed health clinic to sell ‘magic mushrooms’ opened in June in Oregon and has been swamped with surging demand. The waitlist for the clinic exceeds 3,000 people, some of whom are searching for ways to treat depression and PTSD. 

No prescription or referral is needed for Epic Healing Eugene, but customers must be over 21 to receive psilocybin services. 

AP News said some customers complained the ‘mind-bending’ experience is too costly: 

“A client can wind up paying over $2,000, which helps cover service center expenses, a facilitator and lab-tested psilocybin. Annual licenses for service centers and growers cost $10,000, with a half-price discount for veterans.” 

Even though The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association opposed legalizing psilocybin in 2020, voters thought otherwise and also decriminalized the possession of hard drugs. 

Epic Healing Eugene’s owner Cathy Jonas told AP that providing legal access to mushrooms is a ‘dream come true’: 

“The plant medicines have communicated to me that I’m supposed to be doing this thing.”

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Ketamine Therapy Is Now Being Offered Across the US by an Insurance Provider

Ketamine-assisted therapy is now available as a health benefit across the U.S.

Enthea, a benefits company focused on providing insurance coverage for psychedelic treatments, announced it is offering ketamine-assisted therapy to its benefit plans nationwide. The company already has ketamine-assisted therapy on benefit plans in California, New York, and Texas. 

But the number of Americans receiving this type of treatment as a benefit is limited. Currently only 1,500 people are offered it while the company hopes that number will reach 200,000 by the end of 2024. 

Ketamine is the only psychedelic that can legally be used to treat mental health conditions, and there’s been an influx of clinics offering the drug, sometimes in conjunction with psychotherapy, in the last few years. Sessions range from $300 to $1,500 a session without insurance—usually several sessions are recommended. 

Enthea’s ability to offer ketamine as a benefit nationwide is due to new partnerships with two companies—Skylight Psychedelics and Innerwell—that facilitate psychedelic experiences at clinics around the country, remotely, and in people’s homes, according to a news release. 

Employers looking to offer the benefit to its workers can add it on to existing plans, similarly to dental and vision plans, Enthea said. 

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Children on puberty blockers saw mental health change – new analysis

The majority of children in a landmark study on puberty blockers experienced positive or negative changes in their mental health, new analysis suggests.

The original study of 44 children, who all took the controversial drugs for a year or more, found no mental health impact – neither benefits nor harm.

But a re-analysis of that data now suggests 34% saw their mental health deteriorate, while 29% improved.

The authors of the original report have welcomed the new evidence.

The re-analysis, which has been seen by BBC Newsnight, questions some of the conclusions from the 2021 study about the potential mental health impact of puberty blockers on under 16s. It also sheds some light on this much-debated, but little understood, area of children’s medicine.

The new study has not been in a peer-reviewed journal yet. The authors say they felt there was an urgency in getting the information into the public domain.

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EXPLORING SEX AND PSYCHEDELICS

The connection between sex and psychedelics dates back to the sexual liberation movement throughout the 1960s and 70s. Psychedelics, in particular LSD, were associated with loosened sexual inhibitions and the resolution of past sexual trauma. Inspired by Timothy Leary’s infamous calls to ‘turn up, tune in, drop out’, psychedelics appeared as a tool for pleasure, love and self-expression. 

For sex guru Annie Sprinkle, using psychedelics through the 60s, 70s and 80s had profound positive impacts on her sex life. From opening doors to alternative realities, to increasing connectedness and sexual satisfaction between partners, Annie calls them her ‘greatest sexual educators’. 

She notes that the connection between sex and psychedelics is much deeper than arousal. Through each experience the user gains new information, allowing them to see themselves from a new perspective. This, in turn, can inform the individual’s sexual life.

Even though psychedelics remain illegal across much of the world, anecdotal evidence suggests that using psychedelics to enhance sexual experiences is still just as popular as it once was. However, as sex on drugs has inevitably been labelled a high-risk activity , there is a clear lack of hard-line statistics to back up such an assumption. 

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Young People At Risk Of Psychosis Saw Symptoms ‘Surprisingly’ Improve With Marijuana Use, Study Finds

A new study of teens and young adults at risk of developing psychotic disorders found that regular marijuana use over a two-year period did not trigger early onset of symptoms—contrary to the claims of prohibitionists who argue that cannabis causes mental illness. In fact, it was associated with modest improvements in cognitive functioning and reduced use of other medications.

A team of researchers at Zucker Hillside Hospital, Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Michigan and University of California at Davis carried out the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Psychiatry Research.

“Recreational cannabis use has recently gained considerable interest as an environmental risk factor that triggers the onset of psychosis,” the study authors wrote. “To date, however, the evidence that cannabis is associated with negative outcomes in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis is inconsistent.”

To investigate, the team tracked 210 CHR patients ages 12–25 who participated in an Early Detection and Intervention for the Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP). Over the course of two years, researchers compared the mental health and prescription medication usage of people who regularly consumed marijuana to non-users.

The study found that “continuous cannabis use over 2-years of follow-up was not associated with an increased psychosis transition rate, and did not worsen clinical symptoms, functioning levels, or overall neurocognition.”

“Nevertheless, our findings suggest that continuously using cannabis may be associated with slightly elevated, albeit non-significant, attenuated positive symptom levels relative to non-users,” the researchers said.

“CHR youth who continuously used cannabis had higher neurocognition and social functioning over time, and decreased medication usage, relative to non-users,” they reiterated. “Surprisingly, clinical symptoms improved over time despite the medication decreases.”

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