Psychedelics

From Discover Magazine: A group of psychiatrists from the American Psychiatric Association has recently released A Consensus Statement on the Use of Ketamine in the...

On his blog Metaphysical Speculations, Bernardo Kastrup challenges conventional psychiatric assumptions that the brain produces and controls consciousness. Kastrup cites two recent studies published...

The Multi-Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies' Winter 2014 Bulletin is freely available. Among other articles, the issue includes a personal story of a patient,...

From Yahoo! Finance: The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has passed a major hurdle on the path to getting MDMA approved for medical use....

A “not otherwise specified” (NOS) diagnosis is often used when an individual may have some symptoms related to a psychiatric diagnosis but does not meet enough criteria to warrant a particular diagnosis. A new study, published online ahead of print in Psychiatric Services, reveals that the proportion of mental health visits resulting in such NOS diagnoses rose to nearly fifty percent, and that these diagnoses do not result in more conservative psychiatric drug prescriptions.

From The Globe and Mail: A judge has recently ruled that patients at a mental health facility in Ontario were tortured by doctors over a...

People who have taken a psychedelic drug at least once have less suicidal thinking than the general population.

A new article documents the “flimsy evidence” behind the recent FDA approval of the party drug esketamine for the treatment of depression.

Researchers report that dangerous side effects are not being adequately reported in the trials of ketamine for depression.

From The New York Times: In a new book, Blue Dreams, psychologist and patient Lauren Slater critiques the drug-based model of psychiatric care, debunking the chemical...

From Neuroskeptic: A new paper examines the often arbitrary distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs, recommending that scientists avoid using these classifications in research publications. Article →­

In this interview for Scientific American, psychiatrist John Halpern discusses some of the potentially therapeutic effects of peyote, ayahuasca, psilocybin, MDMA and other psychedelics. "Once when...

-New York Magazine discusses two recent studies that looked at the long-term relationships between use of psychedelics and the development of mental illnesses.

The Daily Telegraph reports on a warning published in the Medical Journal of Australia that urges doctors not to “jump the gun in prescribing patients the drug ketamine to treat depression.”

A new study, published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders, investigated the effectiveness of weekly intravenous ketamine injections as a treatment for...

Q13 Fox News discusses recent research giving psychedelics to people struggling with alcohol or cigarettes. David Nutt, an Imperial College London neuro-psychopharmacologist "thinks psilocybin...

New research contends that ketamine can reduce problematic alcohol use but does the data support the claims?

A Kings College London psychiatrist worries what broad new British restrictions on psychoactive substances could mean for psychedelic research.

NPR reports on how ketamine is being used off-label to treat depression.

Mo Costandi provides a brief history in The Guardian of research activities using psychedelic substances such as LSD for psychiatric and psychotherapeutic purposes. Costandi...

-Eamon Armstrong describes the Zendo Project, and his own experience providing support for people taking psychedelic drugs.

From Scientific American: In a day and age when people are increasingly becoming addicted to prescription drugs, and increasingly helped by the therapeutic effects of illicit...

A psychiatrist at the University of Arizona was fired after state Republican Senators criticized her work to university officials, according to the New York...

The journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology has published a review of what is known about psychedelic drugs' biochemical effects in the human brain, their...

From Scientific American: Although "normal" technically means average or typical, both researchers and the general public often view normality as a standard we should all...