Post by Johannes Jungwirth

Small sample, big relevance. Our study comes at a point, when psychedelic therapies become mainstream, are available in a growing number of nations within medical exception frameworks and might even be approved in the U.S. within the next year. But we still know so little about how to implement those treatments into mental healthcare. Our study is one of the first trying to close that gap. We could show that results from RCTs can be translated into routine clinical care: We saw very large effect sizes and a meaningful reduction of depressive symptoms in our patients with treatment resistant depression. We treated patients who came with an average of 5 failed antidepressant trials.  We could also show that safety signals remain similar to strict studies and that our settings were well tolerated: Our setting included both single and group treatments and patients could undergo up to 4 psilocybin sessions with flexible dosage between 20 and 35mg Psilocybin therapy seems to be coming to psychiatry. Whether and how much the treatment will become a disappointment to its high hopes, will depend on careful clinical implementation and even more careful communication. For now, this study is one step towards realistic estimations and might provide practical guidance for future frameworks. I want to thank my wonderful colleagues who were part of the planning, therapy, and analysis: Sebastian Olbrich, Susanne Prinz, Helena Aicher, Samuel Westenhöfer, Eliane Strickler, and Erich Seifritz. But foremost I want to thank our patients, who had the courage to leap into an unknown territory for both themselves and clinical routine. https://lnkd.in/eEjgS6y4 The Lancet Group Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich #psilocybin #depression