Picture this: You walk into a small, dimly lit room and lay on a bed beside a clinician. After talking you through what’s going to happen, they hand you an eye mask, then administer a controlled dose of the psychedelic compound, psilocybin.
As suddenly as the drug takes effect, the world as you knew it starts to dissolve - the chains of old thought patterns finally loosen.
While it might sound intense, this scenario could be a future reality for those living with treatment resistant mental illness, including depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In recent years, psychedelic-assisted therapies have become one of the most fascinating and fast-accelerating areas of psychiatric research, driven by an ever-growing body of exciting new evidence.
The current mental health crisis has also created an urgency for new, more effective treatment options, with over a billion people currently living with mental health disorders, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
