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Frontier mental health research: psychedelics & drug studies

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.

LSD Sadness or low mood BMC Psychiatry

1 paper

LSD for Sadness or low mood

Based on 21 papers

Research on using LSD for sadness or low mood is promising but still early. Small clinical trials and older studies of LSD and other classic psychedelics have shown reductions in low mood for some people, often when the drug is given together with therapy and careful support (for example in patients with serious illness or treatment-resistant depression). However, most studies are small, many results come from different drugs and settings, and no classic psychedelic is yet an approved standard treatment for depression. Scientists have ideas about how LSD might help: it may make brain circuits more flexible and change how people think about themselves. But the exact biological signs in people are unclear, and safety depends a lot on medical screening, the setting, and the therapy used. Larger, better-controlled trials and longer follow-up are still needed to know how well LSD works, who it helps, and how safe it is over time.

Key findings

  • Some small clinical trials and older studies report that LSD and other classic psychedelics reduced symptoms of low mood and depression for weeks or months in some people. 15135 15055 15060 15063
  • Overall evidence is limited: many studies are small, early-stage, or use different drugs and methods, so we cannot be certain how well LSD works for most people yet. 15078 15070 15085 15063
  • When given in carefully controlled medical settings with therapy, trials of psychedelics have generally reported acceptable short-term safety and benefits, but this is not the same as proving long-term safety in wider use. 15135 15055 15085
  • Some psychedelic medicines (for example ibogaine) carry serious medical risks in some people, so safety varies by drug and requires close monitoring; LSD trials under research conditions did not show the same high risk signal as ibogaine. 15050 15085 15135
  • Non-drug factors matter a lot: preparation, the physical and social setting, and follow-up therapy shape whether people get benefit and help keep them safe. 15086 15065 15063 15092
  • Lab and animal studies show classic psychedelics can increase brain plasticity — meaning brain cells grow new connections — and theory (REBUS) says psychedelics can loosen rigid thinking patterns; but human biological markers are inconsistent. 15050 15135 15091 15129
  • There are gaps in who has been studied: many trials enrolled mostly white participants, so we don’t know if results apply equally across different ethnic and cultural groups. 15095

Inclusion of people of color in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: a review of the literature

Timothy I. Michaels, Jennifer Purdon, Alexis Collins, Monnica T. Williams
BMC Psychiatry Summary & key facts 2018 247 citations

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…

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Summaries and links are for general information and education only. They are not a substitute for reading the original publication or for professional medical, legal, or other advice. Always refer to the linked source for the full study.