Classic psychedelic use is associated with reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population

Abstract

Mental health problems are endemic across the globe, and suicide, a strong corollary of poor mental health, is a leading cause of death. Classic psychedelic use may occasion lasting improvements in mental health, but the effects of classic psychedelic use on suicidality are unknown. We evaluated the relationships of classic psychedelic use with psychological distress and suicidality among over 190,000 USA adult respondents pooled from the last five available years of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2008-2012) while controlling for a range of covariates. Lifetime classic psychedelic use was associated with a significantly reduced odds of past month psychological distress (weighted odds ratio (OR)=0.81 (0.72-0.91)), past year suicidal thinking (weighted OR=0.86 (0.78-0.94)), past year suicidal planning (weighted OR=0.71 (0.54-0.94)), and past year suicide attempt (weighted OR=0.64 (0.46-0.89)), whereas lifetime illicit use of other drugs was largely associated with an increased likelihood of these outcomes. These findings indicate that classic psychedelics may hold promise in the prevention of suicide, supporting the view that classic psychedelics' most highly restricted legal status should be reconsidered to facilitate scientific study, and suggesting that more extensive clinical research with classic psychedelics is warranted.

Psychedelics

“…In a more recent report by Hendricks et al (2015), the authors evaluated any relationship between use of a classic psychedelic and psychologic distress and suicidality among more than 190,000 U.S. respondents pooled from the NSDUH for [2008][2009][2010][2011][2012]. Lifetime use of a psychedelic was associated with significantly reduced odds of past-month psychologic distress, pastyear suicidal thinking, past-year suicidal planning, or past-year suicide attempt.…”

Psychiatry & the psychedelic drugs. Past, present & future

“…A serious adverse event is defined as a reaction that results in death, is life threatening, results in prolonged hospitalisation or persistent or significant disability. The absence of this so far is consistent with research using psilocybin in healthy volunteers (Studerus et al, 2011), pre-prohibition research with LSD and mescaline (Cohen, 1960), modern population level data on recreational use of psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics Hendricks et al, 2014Hendricks et al, , 2015Johansen and Krebs, 2015;Krebs and Johansen, 2013a;Nutt et al, 2010;Walsh et al, 2016) and toxicology work (Gable, 2004). However, modern trials with psilocybin are notable for not collecting adverse event data systematically in a manner that allows aggregated analyses.…”

The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present, and Future

“…Contrary to the alarmist campaigning that so negatively affected perceptions of psychedelics after the 1960s, subjective (Carhart-Harris & Nutt, 2010;Carhart-Harris & Nutt, 2013;van Amsterdam, Nutt, Phillips & van den Brink, 2015), naturalistic/observational (Bouso et al, 2012) and population-based data (Hendricks, Thorne, Clark, Coombs & Johnson, 2015) indicate a positive association between psychedelic drug-use and mental health, albeit with some important caveats -which will be discussed below.…”