This Saturday (1st) Australia became the first country to regulate the use of MDMA, ecstasy, and psilocybin, the psychoactive substance found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, for the treatment of mental illness. Even though they continue to be considered illegal drugs in the country, authorized psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA for the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and psilocybin for cases of depression resistant to other types of treatment.
“Psilocybin and MDMA are relatively safe when used in a medically controlled environment under the supervision of appropriately trained healthcare professionals and at dosages that have been studied in clinical trials,” said the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA, in acronym in English) when announcing the change.
According to a report by CNN, Australian psychiatrists and researchers are concerned about the change, since the substances have not yet been formally approved for the treatment of any mental health disorders by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a North American health agency. American. “It’s early compared to the usual process of developing and rolling out new treatments,” clinical psychiatrist Colleen Loo, professor of psychiatry at the University of New South Wales and the Black Dog Institute in Sydney, told CNN.
“The key issue is that the public understand this, and not think that the TGA making these drugs available means that the level of evidence of efficacy and safety is comparable to that normally required for new treatments before they are approved for clinical use,” Loo said. , which was part of a steering committee of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), an organization that represents the medical specialty of psychiatry in Australia and New Zealand, responsible for developing guidelines on how treatment should be approached and monitored .
In other countries, such as Canada and the United States, the medical use of the substances is only allowed in clinical trials or specific cases, although personal use is already legal, as in the state of Oregon, where the personal use of psilocybin for people over 21 years is allowed since 2020. In October 2022, Alberta became the first province in Canada to regulate the use of psychedelic drugs.
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