New research: What are most salient aspects of first-session activities by a therapist who consistently had good clinical outcomes? (a) promoting clients' sense of agency and collaboration (b) supporting clients' exploration (c) creating emotional security onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

In current research, psychedelic experiences are usually considered in terms of separate phenomena: mystical experience, challenging experience etc.

Could it be more clinically useful to consider experiential *profiles* of intertwined, change-mechanism-related phenomena?

MindMed’s ‘Total Elimination’ of Psychotherapy in LSD Study Stokes Debate Around Its Role in Psychedelic Therapies

We look at MindMed's claim to have ‘eliminated’ psychotherapy from its Phase 2b study and explore the broader ‘Spravato-isation’ of PATs.

psychedelicalpha.com/news/mindmeds-…

I spoke with MindMed CEO Robert Barrow + those close to the co's Ph 2b study of MM120 for GAD to better understand how it 'eliminated' psychotherapy from the protocol.

I touch on common factors, FDA reg. authority, lack of shared lexicon among psychedelic drug devs., etc.

What if psychedelic therapy, even when conceptualized as a drug treatment that is delivered with or without 'psychological support', ultimately relies on the same psychological change mechanisms that mediate the efficacy of all effective psychotherapies?

My feed is now ~80% young men who seem to be

- on the autism spectrum
- frustrated with women
- fixated on Bitcoin
- libertarian but also authoritarian (?!)
- fans of dictatorships
- 'concerned' about the decline of Western civilization
- ...

What is going on?

Many such cases

Update: This is still true.

Is now the time to finally implement this idea I had back in 2022?

Interesting results but really hard to interpret! Contrary to what the title may suggest, discontinuation of antidepressants was not experimentally manipulated. Therefore, 'effects' of discontinuation could be explained by confounding natural differences between the groups.

Polyvagal theory (PVT; Porges, 2001, 2021) has gained much traction as a 'science of social safety'. This cogent critique suggests PVT is contradicted by the physiological literature. Key takeaway is that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) cannot be equated with (cardiac) vagal…

Great news! The MEQ and CEQ are relatively long questionnaires. These new shorter versions make space in psychometric batteries for scales that focus on other important aspects of study participants' experiences.

More evidence that psychedelic therapy draws on the same 'common factors' that underlie the efficacy of all effective psychotherapies.

Full-text link: journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

Psychotherapies are not just medical but also ethical projects. Alex Gearin and I looked at the ethical dimension of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

If there is an ideal paper to read on a Sunday morning over two pots of tea, this is it:

'Psychedelic Therapy as Form of Life' by Nicolas Langlitz & Alex K. Gearin

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Training an AI with 'trip reports' to engineer molecules for clinical use seems like a cool but also oddly drug-focused approach. Maybe their model can somehow correct for the fact that drugs & context factors are hopelessly confounded in naturalistic reports. But how?

What should we make of this?

Talking to the good people of the PRSM Lab at Leiden U today about psychedelic and traumatic experiences, especially how their similarities may inform hypothesis generation and improving methodology, and call for more dialogue between psychotraumatology and psychedelic research.