What’s the best psychedelic therapy protocol? It’s debatable

This Lucid News article by Floris Wolswijk starts with the comments: "What will psychedelic-assisted therapy look like when it becomes available? This is a hot debate within the psychedelics field. One side, the maximalists, argues that psychedelic-assisted therapy needs much support. More than with any other medication, patients need to know what they are getting into. After treatment, integration requires more than just a debrief session. The other side, the minimalists, argues that much less time investment might get us to similar outcomes. Patients don’t need to be burdened with repeated and expensive travel for multiple preparation sessions. They make a case for attendants that are present during a psychedelic session and leave the integration to the existing care network.  Two recent publications bring these different approaches to light. One, by Lea Mertens from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim and collaborators at the Charité Berlin and the MIND Foundation, describes the ongoing EPIsoDE trial, a phase II psilocybin trial for treatment-resistant depression. The other, by Neiloufar Family and colleagues from Eleusis, puts forward the Eleusis study design after gaining insights from a trial with LSD with healthy participants. I spoke to both teams and found each had patient benefits top of mind. Though differing insights led the camps to design very different approaches."

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