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are magic mushrooms just the start of a really weird trip or are they the solution to our world's growing mental health crisis this year saw the first ever trial that directly compared hallucinogenic fungi to traditional medications for depression and the results mean that our future might be about to get lots more fungusy globally rates of mental illness are surging and the existing medications we have to treat things like depression aren't perfect some people experience crappy side effects or just don't find them effective at all so having more tools in our toolbox to treat mental health issues would be great and researchers have found a pretty cool tool in mushrooms magic mushrooms that is now shrooms can
actually be any of over 180 species of mushroom that contain these hallucinogenic compounds you may have heard of psilocybin as the active compound in shrooms but actually your body breaks psilocybin down into cilosin this is actually the chemical that is affecting your brain it's what induces increased sensory perception heightened emotions even euphoria and those trademark hallucinations and it's very interesting to neuroscientists because structurally it's really similar to serotonin is a neurotransmitter and hormone that controls a bunch of things all over your body and apparently the serotonin system in your brain how it's taken up by your neurons and how it helps different parts of your brain communicate with each other
is really complex and we still don't fully understand it but generally the consensus seems that low levels of serotonin are linked to depression and anxiety this is why one of the most commonly prescribed medications for depression and anxiety are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or ssris these drugs boost the levels of serotonin in the brain improving the symptoms of these mental illnesses and the scientific community has been looking at hallucinogens for therapeutic use in mushrooms specifically because their potential side effects are generally considered less extreme than something like lsd or ecstasy there's less of an extreme peak and then crash and research shows they have less potential to be addictive which is why in 2021
researchers at imperial college london used mushrooms in their study comparing them to ssris as a treatment for depression a group of 59 participants with major depressive disorder was divided in two some received 25 milligram dose of psilocybin a daily placebo pill and psychotherapy the rest receive one mg dose of psilocybin a daily dose of an ssri and psychotherapy the participants were grouped totally randomly and everyone was told they would be receiving psilocybin this was to make sure that the participants expectations didn't affect their outcome like i was told i would be receiving shrooms and that's why i felt weird these two aspects are what make this study what scientists call a randomized controlled trial so
how'd it go participants self-reported their mental well-being via standardized forms and the results were pretty trippy overall 70 of the psilocybin only group responded positively to treatment compared to the 48 of the ssri group the psilocybin group felt the effects of their treatment more quickly they showed a much greater reduction in suicidality and more improvement in their ability to feel pleasure than the ssri group now it's important to note that even with these differences both groups did experience improvement in their symptoms and ssris can take several weeks or even months to make a noticeable difference so the fact that the study was only six weeks long may mean that the full effect of the ssris wasn't measured by this
study also none of the participants experienced any major adverse side effects which is great but this is at least partially because the study screened out people with pre-existing psychiatric conditions like psychosis which might make an adverse event like a bad trip more likely now another more recent study the largest trial yet of psilocybin's positive impact on depression was also published in 2021 with equally encouraging results and many more studies are currently underway worldwide to keep assessing the efficacy and safety of hallucinogenic mushrooms for therapeutic uses because we're really just starting to understand how they work thanks to tools like functional mris we've found that mushrooms affect the
activity of brain areas like the colostrum and the amygdala we're not entirely sure but we think the colostrum connects the parts of our brain that take in sensory information and it plays a role in consciousness so solosin's alteration of classroom function may change our brain's connectivity and alter our perception of the world around us in the amygdala salosin ramps up activity allowing for increased emotional processing and this could be one of the reasons mushrooms can improve depressive symptoms but psilocybin as a compound is highly restricted and criminalized in many countries even though it's not considered addictive it's in the same category as other
narcotics with a really high potential for abuse like heroin many indigenous cultures have also used mushrooms in spiritual physical and mental well-being practices for centuries but the mainstream is gonna need some more convincing so the more data we have on its therapeutic activity in the brain and how the heck the brain works in the first place the more we could see mushrooms on the menu for mental health if you want more on mental health topics then check out our series mindset hosted by dr t on seekers tick tock keep coming back to seeker for your fungus 4-1-1 and as always thanks for watching i'll see you next time
