npj Mental Health Research
August 6, 2026
Elliot Marseille, Hannes Kettner, Tyrone J. Sgambati et al.
Abstract Psychiatric trials typically define success as symptom reduction, yet patients prioritize meaning, vitality, and functioning. This imbalance undervalues experiential benefits, distorting clinical, policy, and FDA decisions. Psychedelic trials illustrate this, where robust well-being gains sometimes accompany modest symptom effects. We argue well-being should be elevated to co-primary...
International Review of Psychiatry
December 1, 2024
Sean P. Goldy, Peter S. Hendricks, Dacher Keltner et al.
8 citations
In this review, we discuss psychedelics' acute subjective and persisting therapeutic effects, outline the science of positive emotions, and highlight the value in considering distinct positive emotions in psychedelic science. Psychedelics produce a wide variety of acute subjective effects (i.e. the 'trip'), including positive emotions and affective states such as awe and joy. However, despite a...
Frontiers in Psychology
2023
Yuria Celidwen, Dacher Keltner
In this article, we consider prosociality through the lens of an Indigenous "ethics of belonging" and its two constitutive concepts: kin relationality and ecological belonging. Kin relationality predicates that all living beings and phenomena share a familial identity of interdependence, mutuality, and organization. Within the value system of ecological belonging, an individual's identity is...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
August 22, 2022
Maria Monroy, Dacher Keltner
141 citations
How do experiences in nature or in spiritual contemplation or in being moved by music or with psychedelics promote mental and physical health? Our proposal in this article is awe. To make this argument, we first review recent advances in the scientific study of awe, an emotion often considered ineffable and beyond measurement. Awe engages five processes-shifts in neurophysiology, a diminished...