Starting from July 1st 2023, MDMA and Magic Mushrooms will be used in some treatments for PTSD and depression.
Australia has become the world’s first country to approve MDMA (the active ingredient in ecstasy) and Psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) for use in treating mental health problems.
Wired reported that on Friday the 3rd of February the Therapeutic Goods Administration announced that from July 1st 2023, authorised psychiatrists can prescribe MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. It was also announced that psilocybin can also become used to treat depression.
Although Australia is the first country to announce a date to legalise the substances for medical use, scientists around the world have been researching the potential benefits of psychoactive drugs being used to treat certain conditions, and there have been numerous studies that published positive results.
For example, The Mail reported that MDMA could be made available in US hospitals by 2024. This was because a successful trial had led to the researchers looking to use their results to get government approval for medical legalisation.
Other published research found psilocybin can improve the symptoms of patients with depression for up to 12 weeks.
There are still some sceptics warning that there still needs to be more research, but the Australian government is the first to feel satisfied with what the research already carried out.
Simon Ruffell is a psychiatrist and senior researcher at the Psychae Institute at the University of Melbourne, and he told Wired: “When I woke up, my email was completely flooded with people saying: ‘Have you heard what’s happened?’ I was shocked by the decision.”
He continued to say that in many parts of the world medical professionals often train for up to 10 years to become knowledgeable enough to use psychedelic substances for treatments. On this subject, Simon Ruffell said: “I think that a grave error would be to think that psychiatric and psychological qualifications are transferrable to psychedelic substances without additional training.”
