Using psychedelics to mitigate Treatment Resistant Depression

Abstract

Using psychedelics to mitigate Treatment Resistant Depression Cosmo Feilding-Mellen, CEO, Beckley Psytech, charts the role of psychedelics in mitigating Treatment Resistant Depression. When it comes to treating neuropsychiatric and mental health conditions, we have to accept that one size does not fit all. For some, talking therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy plus antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) work wonders. But for millions of others, they don’t. Treatment Resistant Depression is diagnosed when a patient’s first and second lines of depression treatment hasn’t made them feel better or has only made them feel partially better. Psychedelics work by inducing a ‘window of neuroplasticity’ in the brain, which opens up the possibility for new synaptic connections to be formed. This ability makes psychedelics so interesting in the case of treating depression: the psychedelic experience can help patients unearth and address the source of an issue in a new way.