Health workers facing COVID stress to take ‘magic mushroom’ ingredient — for science

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, frontline health care workers continue to face high infection risks and death head-on as many overwhelmed hospitals wrestle to stay afloat. The struggle has taken a toll on workers’ mental health.

Now, dozens of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals will consume small doses of the key ingredient in “magic mushrooms” as part of a clinical trial led by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine to test whether the psychedelic can help relieve their depression and anxiety.

While several trials have tested psilocybin — the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms — among people with the conditions, this one is the first to test the treatment in health care workers.

Dr. Anthony Back, the trial’s lead investigator and an oncologist and palliative-care specialist at UW Medicine, said psilocybin “makes your brain more plastic and your beliefs and desires less rigid.”

The desired outcome? To “allow people to break up habitual cycles of thoughts and beliefs” that might cause their depression.

Psilocybin was labeled a “Schedule 1 drug” in 1970, meaning it has no accepted medical use and has a high potential for abuse, according to researchers. But in the 1990s, studies testing psilocybin found the compound works to treat depression and anxiety, just in a different way than approved medications do.

Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“Nurses right now and doctors are leaving the field in droves. We’re on our way to a public health crisis because providers are leaving,” Back said. “This kind of mental health treatment is really a new way of thinking.”

Researchers are actively recruiting 30 health care workers with “clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety” who are not taking medications to treat it, confirmed with a questionnaire. Participants will be randomly assigned to a test or placebo group.

Before treatment, everyone will undergo two 90-minute counseling sessions with therapists. On the third visit, participants in the test group will consume a pill of “synthesized, pure psilocybin, equivalent to about 3 grams of dried mushrooms” under therapist supervision. The session is expected to last four or more hours.

Then, each participant will meet with counselors another three times to discuss how they feel, particularly their thoughts about their job as a health care worker. The same questionnaire they completed before their treatment will be taken at the end of the trial to determine how the magic mushroom ingredient affected their depression and anxiety.

“At the outset there was this agonizing uncertainty about how easily the virus was transmitted. Then many practitioners saw patients die right in front of them, with no family present, so the clinicians had to carry the emotional burden that family members normally would bear,” Back said in a news release. “And many of these patients die in great physical discomfort, gasping for breath. It’s been really hard, and in some instances traumatic.”

It’s not only health care workers.

About 19.4 million adults in the U.S. had at least one major depressive episode in 2019 — and new data shows the condition has affected many others throughout the pandemic.

Research from Boston University found adult depression tripled during the early months of 2020 when the pandemic began, jumping from 8.5% to nearly 28%. In 2021, depression worsened among adults, rising to about 33%.

Other clinical trials have found psilocybin alleviates depression, anxiety

Several clinical trials have found psilocybin was successful at relieving people of their depression and anxiety symptoms.

A small recent study involving 24 people showed two doses of the psychedelic substance in combination with psychotherapy had effects on depressive symptoms that were four times larger than those from traditional antidepressants.

Nearly 70% of participants showed a more than 50% reduction in depression symptoms just one week after treatment. After four weeks, 54% of participants were in remission, meaning they were no longer considered depressed.

“Because most other depression treatments take weeks or months to work and may have undesirable effects, this could be a game changer if these findings hold up in future ‘gold-standard’ placebo-controlled clinical trials,” Dr. Alan Davis, an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a November 2020 news release.

A separate but similar clinical trial, this time in 233 people and involving only one psilocybin dose, also found significant reductions in depressive symptoms among those given the highest dose (25 milligrams) compared to the lowest (1 milligram).

Although psilocybin is not FDA-approved for psychotherapy purposes, the administration has granted the drug a “Breakthrough Therapy designation” for depression, meaning early evidence shows “a clear advantage over available therapy.”

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