LSD
Overview of LSD Therapies
Psychedelic Psychiatry by Call Number: Online Resource (Ebook Central University Press)ISBN: 9781421400754Publication Date: 2008LSD's short but colorful history in North America carries with it the distinct cachet of counterculture and government experimentation. The truth about this mind-altering chemical cocktail is far more complex--and less controversial--than generally believed. Psychedelic Psychiatry is the tale of medical researchers working to understand LSD's therapeutic properties just as escalating anxieties about drug abuse in modern society laid the groundwork for the end of experimentation at the edge of psychopharmacology. Historian Erika Dyck deftly recasts our understanding of LSD to show it as an experimental substance, a medical treatment, and a tool for exploring psychotic perspectives--as well as a recreational drug. She recounts the inside story of the early days of LSD research in small-town, prairie Canada, when Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer claimed incredible advances in treating alcoholism, understanding schizophrenia and other psychoses, and achieving empathy with their patients. In relating the drug's short, strange trip, Dyck explains how concerns about countercultural trends led to the criminalization of LSD and other so-called psychedelic drugs--concordantly opening the way for an explosion in legal prescription pharmaceuticals--and points to the recent re-emergence of sanctioned psychotropic research among psychiatric practitioners. This challenge to the prevailing wisdom behind drug regulation and addiction therapy provides a historical corrective to our perception of LSD's medical efficacy.
- The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy : LSD Psychotherapy in America.
Analyzing the debates around how to understand and evaluate treatment efficacy, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in LSD and psychedelics, as well as mental health professionals, regulators, and scholars of the history of psychiatry, psychotherapy, drug regulation, and pharmaceutical research and development.
The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy by Call Number: Ebook Central University PressISBN: 9781421426204Publication Date: 2018The rise--and fall--of research into the therapeutic potential of LSD. After LSD arrived in the United States in 1949, the drug's therapeutic promise quickly captured the interests of psychiatrists. In the decade that followed, modern psychopharmacology was born and research into the drug's perceptual and psychological effects boomed. By the early 1960s, psychiatrists focused on a particularly promising treatment known as psychedelic therapy: a single, carefully guided, high-dose LSD session coupled with brief but intensive psychotherapy. Researchers reported an astounding 50 percent success rate in treating chronic alcoholism, as well as substantial improvement in patients suffering from a range of other disorders. Yet despite this success, LSD officially remained an experimental drug only. Research into its effects, psychological and otherwise, dwindled before coming to a close in the 1970s. In The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy, Matthew Oram traces the early promise and eventual demise of LSD psychotherapy in the United States. While the common perception is that LSD's prohibition terminated legitimate research, Oram draws on files from the Food and Drug Administration and the personal papers of LSD researchers to reveal that the most significant issue was not the drug's illegality, but the persistent question of its efficacy. The landmark Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments of 1962 installed strict standards for efficacy evaluation, which LSD researchers struggled to meet due to the unorthodox nature of their treatment. Exploring the complex interactions between clinical science, regulation, and therapeutics in American medicine, The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy explains how an age of empirical research and limited government oversight gave way to sophisticated controlled clinical trials and complex federal regulations. Analyzing the debates around how to understand and evaluate treatment efficacy, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in LSD and psychedelics, as well as mental health professionals, regulators, and scholars of the history of psychiatry, psychotherapy, drug regulation, and pharmaceutical research and development.
Clinical Trials for LSD Therapy
LSD Therapy for Persons Suffering From Major Depression (LAD)
Sponsor:
University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland
Collaborator:
Department of Psychiatry Basel (UPK Basel; Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Borgwardt)
Information provided by (Responsible Party):
University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland
Study Description
Brief Summary:
Background: Major Depressive Disorder is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses, leading to substantial personal distress and economical consequences. Pharmacological Treatment is limited and relapse is frequent.
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was extensively investigated in humans in the 1950s and 1960s and was shown to attenuate depressive symptoms. Clinical research with LSD ended in the 1970s due to regulatory restrictions but its use for personal and recreational purposes continued. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the use of hallucinogens in psychiatric research and practices, reconsidering LSD's antidepressant potential. Larger, well-designed and placebo-controlled studies are warranted. This study will evaluate the potential benefits of LSD-assisted psychotherapy in patients suffering from Major Depressive Disorder.
Objective: To test the efficacy of LSD in patients with Major Depressive Disorder.
Design: Randomised, double-blind, active-placebo-controlled trial using either two moderate to high doses of LSD (100 µg and 100 µg or 100 µg and 200 µg) as intervention and two low doses of LSD (25 µg and 25 µg) as active-placebo control.
Participants: 60 patients aged > 25 years with Major Depressive Disorder (according to DSM-V).
Main outcome measures: Change in depressive symptomatology (IDS-SR, BDI), anxiety (STAI), and general psychopathology (SCL-90) compared with active-placebo-assisted psychotherapy.
Primary Outcome Measures:
- Change in depressive symptomatology assessed by questionnaire compared with active placebo [ Time Frame: Baseline; 1 week before first intervention; 2 weeks after first intervention; 2, 6, and 12 weeks after LSD ]
Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS-SR, IDS-C, self-rated and clinician-rated). Scores are obtained by summing responses to the items, with a total score ranging from 0 to 84 and higher scores indicating more and/or stronger depressive symptoms.
LSD therapy for persons suffering from major depression - full text view. LSD Therapy for Persons Suffering From Major Depression - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov. (2019). Retrieved from https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT03866252.
