A study made by a team at Imperial College London found a hallucinogen in magic mushrooms that they suggest can reset the brains of people who are suffering from severe depression. This finding raised hopes of future treatment. The study consisted of 19 participants who were given a single dose of the psychedelic ingredient psilocybin.
Half of the patients did not show any signs of depression after the study, and they reported to have experienced changes in their brain activity that lasted for five weeks. However, the team who conducted this study warned the public to not self medicate despite the outcome of the experiment.
Depression treatment
There have been numerous small studies that suggest psilocybin could have a major role in depression because it acts as a lubricant for the mind that allows people to escape the cycle of depressive symptoms. But the exact impact of psilocybin on our brain activity is still unknown.
The researchers at Imperial performed MRI brain scans before they started with the psilocybin treatment, and then the day after, the patients were sober again.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports, and it showed psilocybin affected two key areas of the brain. The amygdala, which is involved in how we process emotions like anxiety and fear, becomes less active - the greater the reduction, the greater the improvement in the symptoms that are reported. The default-mode network, which is a collaboration of different brain regions, becomes more stable after taking psilocybin.
The head of psychedelic research at Imperial, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, said that the depressed brain was being clammed up, and the psychedelic experience can reset it. He also said that patients were ready to use this analogy, and they often say that they have been reset, reborn, and rebooted. Some patients even express how their brains had been defragged and cleaned up.
However, this still remains as a small study with few participants. Although there were 19 clinically depressed people who participated in the study, there were no healthy groups of people with whom they can compare the brain scans.
Larger studies are still needed before psilocybin could be accepted as a treatment for depression. But there is no doubt that new approaches to treatment are needed.
A professor from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, Prof. Mitul Mehta, said that what is impressive about these preliminary findings is that the brain changes happened in the networks that are known to be involved in depression, just after a single dose of psilocybin. This provides a clear rationale to now look at the long-term mechanisms in controlled studies.
Taking care of your mental health
For people who are suffering from depression and are not getting the help that they need through conventional treatment such as antidepressants and talking to therapists, studies like this may offer hope. This and the previous studies on psilocybin suggest it may become a treatment option one day for those with a range of psychiatric conditions.
This is important to note that this is experimental, and it is just the early stage in the research. The study lacked a control group, so it is difficult to know whether the improvement in the mood or the changes that are seen on MRI scans can be attributed to the drug. The study is very small, and it is important to bear in mind that half of those who took part in the experiment did not see a reduction in their depression symptoms after five weeks, suggesting that it took time before they gained little benefit.
