Little evidence on how psilocybin therapy interacts with existing psychiatric treatments, review finds

OHSU
By Erik Robinson
March 17, 2022

As Oregon embarks on a voter-approved initiative to permit psychoactive mushrooms in clinical use, a new systematic evidence review from Oregon Health & Science University reveals a lack of scientific research describing the interactions between widely used psychiatric medications and psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA.

The scarcity of data is problematic for people believed to benefit most from psychedelics: those with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The review was published last week in the journal Psychopharmacology.

“There’s a huge deficit in the scientific literature,” said lead author Aryan Sarparast, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry in the OHSU School of Medicine. “There’s a major incongruence between the public enthusiasm and exuberance with psychedelic substances for mental health issues — and what happens when they combine with the existing mental health treatments that we have now.”

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