Magic mushroom drug psilocybin reduced depressive symptoms in trial

A trial funded by the Medical Research Council has found psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, reduced depressive symptoms.

The hallucinogenic active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, was found to ‘markedly reduce’ depressive symptoms, an open-label UK Phase I trial funded by the Medical Research Council has revealed. In the study, 12 patients (six men and six women) with moderate-to-severe major depression who had failed to respond to currently-available depression treatments received the drug and of these, eight were no longer depressed, with five patients going on to become depression-free after three months.

Find out more about the study by reading the original paper published in The Lancet Psychiatry