Psilocybin, the psychedelic substance found in magic mushrooms, is a promising new treatment for psychiatric disorders, especially depression. The beneficial effects on mood and anxiety of psilocybin are rapid and pronounced after just a single treatment . A small study even suggested that these benefits remain after a year .
But what is really needed is a comparison of the long-term effect of psilocybin with another treatment (an antidepressant) or a placebo. Ideally, neither participants nor staff should be aware of who was given what – this is known as “double blind” and is used to remove bias in studies. Recently, a first such attempt was summarised in a published report .
It is a six-month follow-up of a short psilocybin trial published in 2021 . The original study ran for six weeks and included a group of 59 depressed patients, who were randomly allocated to receive either two doses of psilocybin or daily escitalopram, a commonly prescribed antidepressant. After six weeks, both groups showed reduced depression symptoms, without a difference between the groups.
Now, outcomes at six months have been reported. Depressive symptoms were not found to be different between the psilocybin group and escitalopram at the end of this period. However, some differences were found between the groups, such as greater social functioning and increased meaning in life in the patients receiving psilocybin.
Social functioning was measured using a questionnaire where participants can in.
