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Introduction
More and more people have psychological disorders, which gives healthcare professionals and psychologists a reason to develop new treatments. A mental disorder is an illness or a violation of cognitive (intellectual) development that restricts a person’s ability to work or serve themselves and complicates the process of integration into society. There are numerous means of treating psychological issues including medical and non-medical methods. One of the most discussed currently popular therapies refers to psychedelics implementation.
There has been a growing interest in using psychedelics in small doses as an effective intervention. It had been established that such drugs as psilocybin affects cognitive abilities and help recover from mental illnesses (Carhart-Harris & Goodwin, 2017). It is often opposed to traditional psychotherapeutic techniques and its effectiveness is still debated. Therefore, it is vital to compare psilocybin treatment with the conventional methods and define their efficacy.
Psychedelics Treatment: Literature Review
Every year, many studies are conducted worldwide on the medical use of psychedelic substances for the treatment of alcohol and drug addiction, pharmacoresistant depression, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. By observing how they act on the brain of volunteers and animals, scientists analyze the results of their work and evaluate the admissibility of their use in ultra-small doses that do not cause hallucinations. Numerous studies have concluded that this treatment is acceptable in small doses.
Psychedelic is a drug based on a narcotic substance that changes consciousness. Scientists attempt to implement the therapeutic potential of psychedelics to deal with mental issues. Carhart-Harris and Goodwin (2017) established that the drug named psilocybin was an efficient treatment because it could lead to a persistent remission of depression. This drug is powerful because it can transform the mind to remove past traumas. where the sense of self changes and barriers to the study of past traumas are temporarily removed. They also identified that “psilocybin, and psychedelics more generally, share some similarities with conventional antidepressants” (p. 2107). Therefore, their sedative effect helps efficiently treat different mental disorders.
Many studies have shown that psilocybin was efficient in moderating depression at any stage. One study proved that the group receiving psilocybin showed better recovery results than the group taking antidepressants (Carhart-Harris & Goodwin, 2017). According to Vollenweider and Preller (2020), psilocybin can be used individually to suppress destructive thoughts and emotions. The researchers also established that this drug contributes to changes in self-experience and social cognition.
Despite psilocybin’s great potential in treating mental disease, it has limited use for medical purposes, has high addictive potential, and lacks adequate safety for bodily and mental health. Therefore, Mason and Kuypers (2018) established that such treatment should be strictly dosed. An additional risk factor associated with the study of psychedelic substances is the occurrence in some volunteers of a long-term perception disorder caused by hallucinogens.
Psychological Methods vs. Psychedelics Treatment
Typically, people having mental disorders undergo psychotherapeutic interventions. Unlike psilocybin, these techniques are aimed at changing one’s consciousness using various non-medical methods, such as conversation or other psychotherapeutic practices. The primary method for assisting mentally ill people is conducting psychotherapeutic sessions using evidence-based clinical practices. For instance, behavioral treatment includes several interventions designed to help people forget about inappropriate behavior in learning adaptive conduct (Leichsenring & Steinert, 2017). The main goal of this therapy is to involve the depressed patient in actions that please them and give them a sense of their competence.
Cognitive therapy helps people determine pitfalls in their thinking and perceive how they cause impediments to live a full life. By identifying core beliefs and assumptions, people learn to rethink their experiences differently, reducing symptoms and achieving improved behavior and feelings (Leichsenring & Steinert, 2017; Nayak & Johnson, 2020). The other method is psychoanalysis which Sigmund Freud founded. The principle of treatment is based on the study of the unconscious component of a person, the search for the root causes of internal conflicts and experiences that often come from childhood.
On the most basic level, psychotherapeutic conventional treatment includes mind and behavior-changing interventions without prescribing sedatives or other medicine. On the contrary, psilocybin can only be prescribed by the doctor because it changes the structure of the brain cells. However, conventional therapies have proven to have enormous potential in mental disorders’ treatment because they profoundly change one’s consciousness and behavioral patterns without drug usage. Regardless of the long duration of the psychotherapeutic method, it remains dominant in most cases.
Conclusion
Despite the wide range of traditional psychotherapeutic practices, psychedelics are popular in the treatment of mental illness. They are effective for changing one’s state of mind, but they lead to adverse health consequences in some cases. Meanwhile, physiotherapy interventions remain the most effective since their effect is more studied. For severe mental disorders, the method of treatment using both drugs and psychotherapy is more effective than the treatment used alone.
References
Carhart-Harris, R., & Goodwin, G. (2017). The therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs: Past, present, and future. Neuropsychopharmacology, 42, 2105-2113. Web.
Leichsenring F., & Steinert, C. (2017). Is cognitive-behavioral therapy the gold standard for psychotherapy? The need for plurality in treatment and research. JAMA, 318(14), 1323-1324. Web.
Mason, N., & Kuypers, K. (2018). The mental health of a self-selected sample of psychedelic users and self-medication practices with psychedelics, Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 2(1), 45-52.
Nayak, S.M., & Johnson, M. (2020). Psychedelics and Psychotherapy. Pharmacopsychiatry, 54(4), 167-175.
Vollenweider, F.X., & Preller, K.H. (2020). Psychedelic drugs: Neurobiology and potential for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 21, 611-624. Web.
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