| Summary: | Plant-based psychedelics such as psilocybin have an ancient history of medicinal use. After the first English-language report on LSD in 1950, psychedelics enjoyed a short-lived relationship with psychology and psychiatry. Used most notably as aides to psychotherapy for the treatment of mood disorders and alcohol dependence, drugs such as LSD showed initial therapeutic promise before prohibitive legislature in the mid-1960s effectively ended all major psychedelic research programmes. Since the early 1990s, there has been a steady revival of human psychedelic research: last year saw reports on the first modern brain imaging study with LSD and 3 separate clinical trials of psilocybin for depressive symptoms. In this Circumspective piece, Robin Carhart-Harris and Guy Goodwin share their opinions on the promises and pitfalls of renewed psychedelic research, with a focus on the development of psilocybin as a treatment for depression.
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