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.
Research shows ketamine can lift low mood and depression faster than standard antidepressants for some people. Many clinical trials report rapid improvements, often within hours to a day, especially in people whose depression did not improve on usual medicines. However, effects after a single dose often fade over days to weeks, and scientists are still studying how to give ketamine safely over the long term. Scientists have good short-term evidence for ketamine and for a related nasal drug called esketamine. At the same time, researchers warn about common short-term side effects, unclear long-term risks, possible misuse, and gaps in understanding exactly how ketamine works in people. More large and longer studies are needed to answer these questions.
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…
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…
Researchers around the world have started clinical studies again to see if psychedelic drugs can help treat serious mental health problems. This work picks up after research that stopped around the 1950s. Scientists are running controlled studies to test whether these substances can safely reduce problems like depression, anxiety, addiction…
This paper reviews what scientists know about how ketamine and classic serotonergic psychedelics (like psilocybin and LSD) can lift depression quickly. The authors compare how the drugs work in the brain, point out that ketamine has the strongest clinical evidence so far, and say psychedelics show early promise but need…
This paper reviews human and animal research on so-called psychedelics (like psilocybin and LSD) and entactogens (mainly MDMA). The authors say these drugs can produce fast improvements in mental health that sometimes last for months or longer. But we do not yet understand exactly how they work. Human studies point…
Researchers looked at published papers about psychedelic drugs from the last century, using citation maps and other tools to see how the field changed up to March 2022. They found that research was small and mostly about safety for many decades, then grew a lot after the 1990s into a…
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…
This paper reviews past and recent research on classic psychedelics and some newer psychedelic-like drugs as treatments for unipolar and bipolar depression. Classic psychedelics named in the paper are LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and ayahuasca. Early carefully controlled studies of psilocybin show encouraging results for unipolar depression, and ketamine (in the…
Researchers looked back at recordings and interviews from 26 people who got ketamine infusions for treatment-resistant depression. They found that things people were exposed to in the days before treatment — especially digital media like videos — sometimes showed up inside their ketamine experiences and changed how emotional or “mystical”…
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…
Researchers pooled results from 29 human studies that measured blood levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, after people received so-called psychoplastogen drugs such as ketamine or psychedelics. They found no clear change in blood BDNF after these drugs. The authors say this does not prove the…
