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Psychedelics Not Linked To Mental Health Problems, Studies Claim

Psychedelics Studies

A couple of studies have concluded that there is no link between psychedelic drugs such as LSD and mental-health conditions such as psychosis.

The studies, which were published in the journal Psychopharmacology, analyzed data from more than 135,000 randomly selected survey participants; 19,000 of whom had used psychedelic drugs in the first study and another 190,000 NSDUH respondents were analyzed in the second.

Researchers found that the 14 percent who described themselves as having used any of the three “classic” psychedelic drugs — which are LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin (active ingredient in magic mushrooms) — did not exhibit an increased risk of developing 11 indicators of mental-health problems including depression, attempted suicides, anxiety disorders and psychosis, amongst others.

One of the authors of the first study, Orjan Johansen with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, clarified their research as having been limited to the “classic psychedelics” which included only the aforementioned.

We restricted our study to the ‘classic psychedelics’ to clarify the findings

Associate professor in the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the second study Matthew Johnson was quoted by Scientific American as having said that the study’s authors “are not claiming that no individuals have ever been harmed by psychedelics,” instead that such instances as acid casualties “are rare” and the harms have been “overstated” up until now.

Psychologist Johansen and neuroscientist Teri Krebs behind the first study found that the use of psychedelics correlates with fewer mental health problems, however, Krebs notes that they “cannot exclude the possibility that use of psychedelics might have a negative effect on mental health for some individuals or groups, perhaps counterbalanced at a population by a positive effect on mental health in others” due to the limitations of the design of their study.

Given the design of our study, we cannot exclude the possibility that use of psychedelics might have a negative effect on mental health for some individuals or groups, perhaps counterbalanced at a population level by a positive effect on mental health in others

What do you think of these psychedelic studies discrediting the portrayed rate of acid casualties?

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