Education / Research

What Is Psychedelic Therapy? What the Research Shows

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Psychedelic therapy, also called psychedelic-assisted therapy, is the name researchers give to a treatment model: structured therapy built around one or a few supervised sessions with a psychedelic such as psilocybin. It is the model behind most of the clinical trials people read about.

This page explains how it works in studies, what the pooled results show, and what that does and does not tell us about using these mushrooms outside a clinic.

What it involves

In trials, psychedelic therapy usually has three parts. Preparation sessions come first, where a therapist builds trust, explains what to expect, and helps the person set intentions. Then come one or a few dosing sessions, in a calm room with trained monitors present throughout. Integration sessions follow, helping the person make sense of what happened and bring it into daily life.

Across the controlled depression trials pooled in the review below, people had between three and nine therapy sessions apart from the dosing sessions themselves. The therapy is not an add-on. It is a large part of what is being tested.

What the pooled research shows

Reviews

Pooled trials: a large effect, with big caveats

The meta-analysis of 12 controlled trials with 733 adults found that psychedelic-assisted therapy was associated with a large reduction in depressive symptoms compared with control groups.

Worth knowing

The authors flag that 9 of the 12 trials had a high risk of bias, mostly because it is hard to blind people to a psychedelic. Smaller trials tended to report bigger effects, and when the authors adjusted for that the estimate shrank. They call the results preliminary. Longer follow-up also went with smaller effects.

Reviews

The safety guidelines researchers follow

Researchers at Johns Hopkins wrote safety guidelines for human studies of psychedelics. They describe the main risk as overwhelming distress during the experience, with prolonged psychosis a rarer risk. Their safeguards: screen out people with a personal or family history of psychotic disorders or other severe psychiatric conditions, build trust and prepare people carefully beforehand, use a safe physical setting, have at least two monitors present, and follow up afterward. The authors say lasting adverse reactions are rare when research follows these guidelines.

Worth knowing

These are 2008 guidelines for supervised research, not a protocol for use on your own. They show what careful studies do. They do not show that doing it yourself carries the same low risk.

Reviews

The biggest safety review: well tolerated in research settings

A systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 214 studies of classic psychedelics, a group that includes psilocybin. Of these, 114 reported usable adverse-event data, covering 3,504 people. Non-serious effects such as headache were common, and psilocybin and LSD looked similar. No serious adverse events were reported among healthy volunteers. About 4 percent of participants who had a neuropsychiatric condition did have one, including worsening depression, suicidal behavior, psychosis, or seizures. The authors concluded these drugs were generally well tolerated in clinical and research settings.

Worth knowing

These were supervised research sessions with screened participants, not people using on their own. Events were tracked after full-strength sessions, and the review was not built to answer questions about repeated small doses. Only 16 of the 68 studies published since 2005 described a systematic way of tracking side effects, so the true rates are uncertain. The authors note that serious events reported outside research have not shown up in trial participants, so the trial results do not carry over directly.

What it is not

Taking mushrooms on your own is not psychedelic therapy, even if it borrows some of the ideas. In trials, people are screened by clinicians, prepared, supervised the whole time, and followed up afterward. Those safeguards are part of why the safety results look the way they do, and the researchers themselves note that those results do not carry over directly to use outside research.

It also does not apply equally to every condition. Depression has the most evidence. For others, such as chronic pain, the studies are small or still running.

Finding support

If you are thinking about working with a therapist before or after any experience, our page on preparing for a psychedelic experience has questions to ask and what the research says about preparation and integration.

Keep reading

This page is for adults 21 and older. It summarizes published research for education only. It is not medical or legal advice, and it makes no claim that any product sold by Luna treats, cures, prevents, or helps any condition. Laws about these mushrooms vary by place, and you are responsible for knowing yours.

Research moves quickly. We last checked this page against its sources on , and we will correct it if we get something wrong.