Psychedelics are touted as a mental health cure. We should be wary

No psychiatric treatment has attracted quite as much cash and hype as psychedelics have in the past decade. Articles about the drugs’ surprising results—including large improvements [in] depression scores and inducing smokers to quit after just a few doses—earned positive coverage from countless journalists…. Organizations researching psychedelics raised millions of dollars, and clinicians promoted their potential to be a “new paradigm” in mental health care.

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But the bubble has started to burst: It’s been a bad year for fans of psychedelics.

In [August 2024], the FDA rejected the first application for therapy assisted by MDMA, … saying that it “could not be approved based on data submitted to date,” according to the company that brought the application, Lykos.

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Many of the studies underpinning these substances’ healing powers are weak, marred by a true-believer mentality among its researchers and an underreporting of adverse side effects, which threatens to undermine an otherwise bright frontier in mental health treatment.

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