Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
Researchers are testing several treatment approaches for obsessive‑compulsive disorder (OCD). These include traditional psychotherapies, ketamine (a fast-acting medicine), and psychedelic-assisted therapies (where a mind‑altering drug is given together with psychological support). Some early reports and small studies suggest benefits, but the strongest proof so far is for depression and addiction, not OCD. Many psychedelic and ketamine studies are small or early‑stage and need larger, careful trials. What patients and clinicians should know is this: no psychedelic medicine is officially approved yet. How the drug is given, the safety checks, and the therapy before and after a drug session matter a lot. Research also has limits: many trials have few participants, people of color are often left out, and the growing business around these drugs raises extra scientific and ethical questions.
The authors reviewed psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy studies published from 1993 to 2017 to see how many people of color took part. They found 18 studies with about 280 people. About 82% of participants were non-Hispanic White, while only small percentages were African American, Latino, Asian, indigenous, or mixed race. Because so…
This review looked at many studies about classic psychedelics (like psilocybin and LSD), MDMA, ketamine, and plant medicines (like ayahuasca). The authors explain how these drugs can change the brain’s wiring, calm inflammatory processes, and shift key brain chemicals. Those actions may help explain why small clinical trials and animal…
Researchers collected and read 15 studies where patients described their own experiences with psychedelic treatments for mental disorders. These studies looked at about 180 patient accounts across different drugs and different illnesses. Even though the drugs and treatment settings were very different, many patients described similar helpful processes, such as…
This paper reviews clinical and lab studies about psychedelic therapy, which means using a psychedelic drug together with psychological support. The authors say this approach looks promising for several different mental health problems that share rigid or harmful patterns of feeling, thinking, or acting — especially major depression, depression that…
This review describes a rapid rise in medical research on psychedelic drugs over the past five years. Several later-stage clinical trials have been published, and many different drugs — including psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, LSD, ayahuasca, and ibogaine — are being tested for conditions such as depression, post‑traumatic stress, addiction, obsessive‑compulsive…
Researchers ran an online survey of about 174 people who had used psychoactive drugs to see how these drugs affected obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. Participants reported that classic psychedelics were the only drugs that helped reduce OCD symptoms, and bigger immediate effects (which were linked to higher doses) were tied…
The authors reviewed 83 papers and guides about how therapists prepare people for substance-assisted psychotherapy — therapy that uses drugs like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, or ketamine together with psychological support. They found clear agreement that good preparation before a drug session is important for safety and for helping people get…
