United States: Researchers have estimated that more than 5 million Americans could be helped if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration permits or can say enables the use of the psychedelic in depression treatment, known as “magic mushrooms”.
“Say what we’ve done here is pick at the tip of the iceberg; we have not yet fully understood the implications of psilocybin therapy in public health,” said Dr. Charles Raison, one of the authors of the study. He resident Lecturer/Research with the University of Wisconsin, in Madison and a much-respected medical practitioner particularly as professor of psychiatry and human ecology.
As reported by HealthDay, Psilocybin pegged as a dangerous hallucinogen, outlawed for many years as a substance that prompted rituals such as witchcraft, was recently ‘renamed’ as a substance that can cure hard-to-treat depression.
The drug is already seen by the FDA for possible use in treatment of depression.
And how many American stands to gain?
To this end, Raison and colleagues reviewed the national rates of depression along with patient characteristics (from more recent clinical trials) that could qualify the person for the psilocybin therapy.
The result: Mid-range estimates suggested that between 56% and 62% of current American depression cases could attempt psilocybin.
That’s anywhere from 5. 1 million to 5. 6 million potential patients, the researchers have established.
The number could even further rise if some of the people who are not receiving treatment for depression decide one day that they would like to attempt using psilocybin, the investigators pointed out.
“This underlines the need to appreciate the rolling out of this innovative intervention on the larger population,” said the study’s author, Syed Fayzan Rab, an MD candidate at the Emory University’s medical school in Atlanta. The findings were made were published on the 13th of September 2018 in the journal called Psychedelics.
His team observed that the patients that would be candidates for receiving psilocybin therapeutic sessions might also suffer from substance use disorders. The treatment is slowly and gradually gaining acceptance among these kind of patients as do the authors of the study.
The exact numbers of the people who might turn to psilocybin for help would also depends on the conditions set by the FDA regarding who should and should not use this particular drug.
The extent to which insurance would cover the costs of the psilocybin therapy as the availability of the people trained to safely administer it and would also come into the play.