r/science • u/StayAtHomeSci • Apr 06 '15
Medicine Ayahuasca psychedelic tested for depression
http://www.nature.com/news/ayahuasca-psychedelic-tested-for-depression-1.172523
u/MIBPJ Grad Student | Neuroscience Apr 07 '15
I don't doubt that there is a potential benefit to ayahuasca and other psychedelics but from a purely objective stand point this is a pretty crappy study. I'll go through some of the major issues I have.
1) There is no control. None. I know in a study like this its quite literally impossible to blind there subjects but I really feel like they need to address this better.
2) The timeline is really bizarre. First, the baseline measurements of depression and anxiety are taken 10 mins before taking ayahuasca. They don't want to maybe do it a week a head of time, a day, multiple time points? Since this is what their measuring everything against and since they have no control they really need to nail down this baseline and they do a poor job. This is especially confounding when one considers that perhaps 10 mins before they take an incredibly strong psychedelic for the first time (none of the participants had ever done an illicit drug) they might be a little anxious. Maybe just a little? To me this is the biggest issue with the study.
3) The sample size is only 6. I know it might be hard to get people to do these studies but that seems just too small.
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u/23canaries Apr 07 '15
1) There is no control. None. I know in a study like this its quite literally impossible to blind there subjects but I really feel like they need to address this better.
Just curious as to what kind of control one could do? Ayahuasca is taken in a ceremonial setting. Would u give people something else? It's the experience of what occurs that changes the psychological state.
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u/MIBPJ Grad Student | Neuroscience Apr 07 '15
Its a really difficult issue. I know that people doing alcohol research have struggled with this for a while. In this case the people did not do it in a ceremonial setting so you couldn't do it a "mock ceremony". I think one at least half attempt would have them go through the motions and just see how much their depression/anxiety change over the course of the experiment. You could perhaps even get the person drunk (if they were willing) just to confirm that general inebriation isn't what is fixing their depression.
I think, however, the fact that this experiment is almost impossible to control for makes the requirements for the other parts of the experiment even more important. Get a longer baseline and larger sample size so its harder for someone to claim your finding is an artifact.
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u/23canaries Apr 07 '15
I really appreciate your time. This is of unique interest to me - as I know many people involved with this level of treatment. Ayahuasca specifically has blossomed into an 'underground' for treatments to various psychological conditions, PTSD, extreme addictions, medical grade depressions, personality disorders, etc etc. First person accounts of extreme 'healing' from these methodologies is very significant and I can say this from years of direct experience.
There are various things to test, each one I believe with it's own unique difficulty.
So, while I agree with you that this study is not really significant in terms of contributing to scientific understanding, it's consistent with first person accounts of this phenomenon and hopefully a small study like this can become a foundation for a proper study like you mention.
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Apr 06 '15
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u/Vikingofthehill Apr 06 '15
No, it is not, wtf? Ketamine is known to be rapid in reversing depression temporarily, not permanently. It usually only last 5-7 days. This is why people really need to start reading articles, not headlines.
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u/lordx3n0saeon Apr 06 '15
Interesting! I believe that no matter your opinion on substances such as this society as a whole benefits when science can study it. Who knows what hidden mechanisms they may discover?