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.
1 paper
Researchers are actively studying ketamine as a fast-acting medicine that might help people with trauma-related problems like PTSD. Lab work and small clinical studies show ketamine changes brain chemicals quickly and can reduce symptoms in the short term, but the clinical evidence specifically for PTSD is still early and mixed. Scientists agree ketamine should be given with careful medical supervision, and many teams say the drug’s effects are shaped by the therapy and the treatment setting. Important questions remain. Studies disagree about some biological markers, long-term benefits, and how much of any improvement comes from the drug itself versus the therapy around it. Researchers call for larger, well-controlled trials and longer follow-up to know if ketamine is a safe, lasting, and reliable option for PTSD.
This paper describes psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which means giving drugs like ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, LSD or ibogaine together with guided therapy. The authors say this approach has shown promising safety and benefits so far, even for people who did not get better with usual treatments. They also argue that these therapies…
