Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer: A randomized double-blind trial

By Roland R. Griffiths, Matthew W. Johnson, M. Carducci, A. Umbricht, W. A. Richards, Brian D. Richards, Mary P Cosimano, Margaret A. Klinedinst. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2016

1,850 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cancer patients often develop chronic, clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety. Previous studies suggest that psilocybin may decrease depression and anxiety in cancer patients. The effects of psilocybin were studied in 51 cancer patients with life-threatening diagnoses and symptoms of depression and/or anxiety. This randomized, double-blind, cross-over trial investigated the effects of a very low (placebo-like) dose (1 or 3 mg/70 kg) vs. a high dose (22 or 30 mg/70 kg) of psilocybin administered in counterbalanced sequence with 5 weeks between sessions and a 6-month follow-up. Instructions to participants and staff minimized expectancy effects. Participants, staff, and community observers rated participant moods, attitudes, and behaviors throughout the study. High-dose psilocybin produced large decreases in clinician- and self-rated measures of depressed mood and anxiety, along with increases in quality of life, life meaning, and optimism, and decreases in death anxiety. At 6-month follow-up, these changes were sustained, with about 80% of participants continuing to show clinically significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety. Participants attributed improvements in attitudes about life/self, mood, relationships, and spirituality to the high-dose experience, with >80% endorsing moderately or greater increased well-being/life satisfaction. Community observer ratings showed corresponding changes. Mystical-type psilocybin experience on session day mediated the effect of psilocybin dose on therapeutic outcomes. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00465595

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/98088cd68bccdfbbf39bc1510e51df9da87f8973

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Citations in the corpus

The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present, and Future (2017, background): “…clinical development of psychedelics, RLC-H sees it as a potentially exploitable component—especially as it has been shown to be predictive of long-term clinical outcomes (eg, in Johnson et al, 2014; Bogenschutz et al, 2015; Griffiths et al, 2016; Ross et al, 2016; Carhart-Harris et al, 2016a,b).”
Single-Dose Psilocybin for a Treatment-Resistant Episode of Major Depression. (2022, background): “Any severe adverse event 7 (9) 5 (7) 1 (1)”
Quality of Acute Psychedelic Experience Predicts Therapeutic Efficacy of Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression (2018, background): “…the MEQ and M scale have been found to be predictive of long-term positive therapeutic outcomes in trials of psilocybin for cancerrelated distress (Griffiths et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016), tobacco smoking (Garcia-Romeu et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2016) and alcohol dependence (Bogenschutz et…”
Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: six-month follow-up (2017, background): “Recent studies (Griffiths et al. 2016; Ross et al. 2016; Carhart-Harris et al. 2016), including the present one, help demonstrate the feasibility of treating patients with major depressive disorder with psilocybin plus psychological support.”
Serotonin and brain function: a tale of two receptors (2017, background): “…intense psychedelic experiences predict positive long-term outcomes – particularly if they contain phenomena consistent with so-called ‘mystical’ (Stace, 1961) or ‘peak’ (Maslow, 1970) experiences (Bogenschutz et al., 2015; Griffiths et al., 2008, 2016; Johnson et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016).”
Developing Guidelines and Competencies for the Training of Psychedelic Therapists (2017, background): “Griffiths et al. (2016) reported results on a very low dose psilocybin session versus a high-dose psilocybin session for 51 participants with life-threatening cancer.”
Patients’ Accounts of Increased “Connectedness” and “Acceptance” After Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression (2017, positive): “…formal, quantitative analyses of the utility of psilocybin (Carhart-Harris, Bolstridge, et al., 2016; Carhart-Harris, 2017; Gasser et al., 2014; Griffiths et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2016) and should help inform and enrich understanding of this novel treatment and its mechanisms of action,…”