Anxiety and depression are mental health conditions where there is extreme sadness due to a traumatic condition, feeling worthless, and fear which interferes for a long time in the daily activities of a person.
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and/or an apparent expansion of consciousness. Psychedelic drugs are used to treat anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more mental health issues.
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According to a study, a more mystical and insightful psychedelic drug experience may be linked to a long-term reduction of mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
It involved machine learning to analyze data from nearly 1,000 survey respondents about their previous non-clinical experiences with psychedelic drugs. The people who scored the highest on questionnaires assessing the mystical and insightful nature of their experiences have shown consistent improvements in anxiety and depression.
The psychedelics drugs exhibited beneficial results for people suffering from a mental condition feeling a sense of fear, destabilizing. This could be helpful for practitioners to know as they guide patients through clinical trials testing psychedelics’ therapeutic potential.
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This study was the first to characterize subtypes of the subjective psychedelic experience and link them to mental health outcomes. The data was collected from the previous work of Davis including an anonymous internet-based survey of people having moderate to strong psychedelic experiences in the past that have resulted in improvements in anxiety and depression.
It is to be noted that 985 responses from participants were analyzed in the study describing the substances they had used and completed questionnaires evaluating the extent to which their psychedelic experience was mystical, psychologically insightful or challenging. The outcomes assessed in the survey included depression and anxiety levels and ratings of satisfaction with life and psychological flexibility before and after the intake of psychedelic drugs.
The sample used in the study included users of psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD, Ayahuasca, mescaline, peyote cactus and 5-MeO-DMT, the natural psychedelic substance in the venom of the Colorado River toad, with the estimated dose level of the single drug use.
The outcomes showed three distinct subtypes of psychedelic experiences:
- High scoring, combining high scores on the mystical and insightful assessments with moderate scores on the challenging assessment.
- Low scoring, with low to moderate scores on mystical and insightful experiences and low scores on the challenging scale.
- Positive scoring, with high scores for mystical and insightful experiences and low scores on the challenging assessment.