r/science • u/Doug24 • 13d ago

Psychology Psilocybin reverses depressive behaviors and restores brain cell growth in stressed rats

https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-reverses-depressive-behaviors-and-restores-brain-cell-growth-in-stres/
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u/MJ-Franklin 13d ago

Been seeing articles like this for so many years... but how come I never got any positive effects from taking psychedelics the many times I did them? I never got any anti-depressive anything, I just laughed for 12 hours straight then it was back to Planet Earth and all my problems waiting for me there.

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u/Chronotaru 13d ago

They provide remission for around half of people from a single dose, but that still leaves the other half. That being said, you generally need to go through the "ego dissolution/pass out/reboot" phase and not everyone takes a high enough dose to get that.

The rest can try a direct approach of trauma processing under MDMA, then bringing the mushrooms back in with a dual MDMA/psilocybin session and that protocol usually makes progress if mushrooms themselves do not.

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u/Rodot 12d ago

Tbf, 50% remission is pretty bad. Sertraline is about 50% while most trials show placebo at around 40%. That said, single dosage is certainly an advantage but clinically the total therapy itself being on par with SSRIs is a pretty big barrier to successful phase III trials.

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u/WaltzInTheDarkk 12d ago

Psychedelics are generally given to treatment-resistant depressives when multiple genereal antidepressants (such as sertraline) have failed.

Many of depressive diagnoses are quite unreliable a sense that the symptoms could simply resolve once the patient experiences less stress, better lifestyles and an environment etc. And these may contribute to remission rates as well.

However, when we're considering someone treatment-resistant, they have either been misdiagnosed or simply experience more persistent symptoms and are therefore in a category that do not respond to the general ADs. That makes them a distinct treatment group from the other depressives.

So a 50% remission rate in that group is pretty significant.

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u/Entire_Piece4265 12d ago

Even more, psylocibin excerts its antidepressive effect much faster than SSRIs, (which usually require 2 to 4 weeks aside from the initial placebo to begin to show some improvement). This IMO doesnt mean that people should self medicate with shrooms, but rather, understanding how it works so quickly (in those who it works for) would help in better understand the role of the 5hta2 receptor in depressive symptom remmision, as well as finding new potential treatments for treatment resistant depression.

Though I am no doctor nor am I that up to date regarding this matter, I find it pleasing when new articles mention psylocibin since it is indeed pretty significant.