Germany Conducts Study Involving Psychedelics and Mental Health Disorders
These mushrooms contain psilocybin, the drug used in the study. (Wikimedia Commons)
A panel of experts attended the INSIGHT conference held by the Mind Foundation from September 9 and 12 in order to explore the use of psychedelics in treating depression, eating disorders, and addiction (in combination with therapy), which has recently increased in popularity in Germany.
The German Government approved a phase 2b study on psilocybin, a psychoactive chemical found in certain species of mushrooms that may treat forms of depression that are resistant to conventional therapeutic methods, in November 2020. This study provided a preliminary report that determined the safety and efficacy of psychedelic use in treating mental health disorders.
The study, conducted in the spring and early summer of 2021, was hosted by the Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim in coordination with the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Charité Campus Berlin Mitte and the MIND Foundation. It is the result of two years of research led by Dr Gerhard Gründer, involving 144 patients.
According to Gründer, the largest obstacle to the study was not a lack of willing patients or funding, but rather finding the psychedelic substances to be used in the experiment. “Obtaining the substance has proven to be the highest hurdle. There are not that many manufacturers in the world from whom you can obtain such a substance in the required quality. It was a long and laborious process.”
This will not be the first study involving the use of psychoactive substances in treating mental health disorders. In the 1950s, research was performed using LSD and psilocybin as therapeutic methods in both Europe and the USA. President Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs’ put an end to psychedelic research in the U.S. In Germany, psilocybin studies were conducted until the 1990s.
The promise of psychedelic use in mental health treatment has caused a spike in investment. Compass, a mental healthcare company, funded a second study at the Charité campus, raising $145m at its stock market flotation in New York last fall.
Co-founder Lars Wilde explained, “Germany was a leading center, if not the leading center for psilocybin research at the University of Göttingen where hundreds of subjects were treated for all kinds of disorders. When the researchers of that generation retired, some of that knowledge was lost. I hope with these studies this knowledge will be revived.”
Depression is considered a “widespread disease” by the German Health Ministry, with an estimated 5 million people reporting symptoms of depression. Additionally, conservative estimates state that roughly 1 in 5 people with depression are unresponsive to traditional treatment methods. This statistic shows a popular demand for unconventional ways to treat mental health disorders.
The results of the study have yet to be released, but a similar study conducted at Imperial College London in the Spring of 2021 found that the use of psilocybin was equally effective to traditional drugs when used to treat depression; a similar conclusion may be drawn from the German study.