Psilocybin and Depression

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Can psilocybin help depression? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Psilocybin-assisted therapy helped the majority of participants with major depressive disorder experience resolution of their symptoms, a small study led by Alan Davis and colleagues at Johns Hopkins has found. Davis says that initially half the group was offered therapy, then everyone was. 

Davis: Once everyone had the treatment, we found that one week after treatment, we had 67% who had a clinically significant response to the treatment. And at four weeks that was 71%. We defined a clinically significant response as a drop by more than half of their baseline depression scores. In terms of complete remission of depression, at one week after treatment, 58% were in remission. And at four weeks after treatment, 54% were still in remission.   :30

Davis says the treatment involved two five-hour psilocybin sessions at the medical center and results persisted at least four weeks. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.