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 finding several promising ways to reduce anxiety and worry. The strongest and most consistent clinical results so far come from giving psychedelic or fast‑acting drugs together with careful psychotherapy. Ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin show the quickest and clearest positive results in trials for related problems. Non‑drug approaches like talking therapies and physical activity also help and have longer histories of evidence. At the same time, many drug studies are still small, early‑stage, or done in narrowly selected groups. Important factors that shape outcomes include how the drug is given, the therapy around it, and safety monitoring. There are real risks and unanswered questions, so scientists say more large, diverse, and carefully run trials are needed before these treatments become routine.
This paper looked across existing studies of psilocybin and found that, when it is given along with psychotherapy or therapy-style support, it looks promising as a treatment for several mental health problems, including cases that did not get better with other treatments. But the authors say the current studies are…
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…
