Hey,
I had the pleasure of hearing the lecture from the Carhart-Harris group and the way I see it there are two vital factors as to why psychedelics can treat depression.
The first issue has to do what you have already mentioned in your post and in your review article. Psychedelics increase the reactivity of the Amygdala to both positive and negative stimuli. SSRI on the other hand seem to do the exact opposite. The reason why SSRI are perscribed so widely is because the therapeutic goal seems to be a general flattening of affect in order endure mental problems. So the therapeutic goal seems to be the suppression of mental problems.
Now psychedelics seem to do the opposite, so the idea here is to create a different therapeutic goal. What a lot of therapists are postulating is that psychedelics catalyze the process of confronting your mental problems. The therapeutic goal here is to overcome your problems by facing them full on. This is promising but also dangereous, because you have to make sure that the patient is ready to face his/her problems.
The second issue is the profound effects on the brains Default Mode Network. This network constitutes the brains central maintenance activity, presumabley for functions such as autobiographic memory and memory consolidation. In depression this network seems to be overactive, which corresponds to depressed patients constantly ruminating over themselves. There is the expression, one cannot escape their own thoughts. Depressed people also tend to have a pronounced negativity bias towards others.
Psychedelics tend to decrease Default Mode Network activity, which is why they may help people escape their own thoughts. Ketamine is thought to be effective for the very same reason. I'm not a clinician but those are my two cents. Hope to have more of such conversations!
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
Fantastic, thanks for taking the time to check it out. I am so motivated to help make it possible for patients to have these options to consider when faced with debilitating disorders like depression. I use mindfulness training to guide patients away from the loop that occurs in the default mode network currently, to optimize their safety awareness, problem solving, body awareness to help out with rehabilitation program and it has fantastic impacts for those that seek to utilize it. The longer-term effects observed with psychedelic-assisted therapies is extremely promising for sustaining improved quality of life for patients, which could help relieve some of the strain on overburdened health providers that treat populations like veterans or the elderly.
I am looking forward to more discussions as well!
Yes, there is also research from Milan Scheidegger which shows that psychedelics can also increase mindfulness. So there probably is some overlap between psychedelic and mindful states, but I'm not a mindfullness expert per se.