New study finds shrooms to be effective against depression

A recent study has suggested that magic mushrooms may be a promising treatment option for depression in patients who have not otherwise responded to conventional medicine. Researchers from Imperial College London gave psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in mushrooms, to 12 clinically depressed people. After one week, all of them showed "a marked improvement in their symptoms."

From Scientific American:

"That is pretty remarkable in the context of currently available treatments," says Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London and first author of the latest study, which is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

The equivalent remission rate for SSRIs is around 20%.

The study's authors are not suggesting that psilocybin should be a treatment of last resort for depressed patients. "Our conclusion is more sober than that—we are simply saying that this is doable," says Carhart-Harris. "We can give psilocybin to depressed patients, they can tolerate it, and it is safe. This gives us an initial impression of the effectiveness of the treatment."

Comments

Weirdly Charming

If you’re a fan of art that makes you do a double-take, you need to check out Richard Brener . Based in the UK, Richard is an internationally collected artist who works primarily with ink, fineliners, and gouache. When you first see his pieces, they actually look pretty playful. Then you realize the entire canvas is packed with thousands of tiny, ghost-like shapes he calls "champs." They’re all squeezed together like commuters on a rush-hour train, and the level of detail is honestly mind-blowing. Richard spends hundreds of hours drawing these little guys over and over. It’s obsessive, very intentional, and a little bit wild. The cool part is that the longer you stare, the more the vibe shifts. Check out more photos below:

The Adorable Sculptures of Yen Yen Lo

These images are from a series of wall sculptures created by Yen Yen Lo . Here you can see her intricately textured ceramic pieces, looking downright adorable. Yen Yen Lo's eye for the unique and whimsical is delightful. Apparently they are not intended for kids under 16. Fifteen-year-olds cannot be trusted with fragile stuff. Get them a Funko Pop instead.

Photographer documents her stay at a mental hospital with haunting self-portraits

Most documentary projects about mental illness reveal someone else's behavior, but Laura Hospes took a very different approach. The Dutch photographer documented her stay at a psychiatric ward, and her raw, striking and sometimes unbearable black and white self-portraits reveal the reality of what it's like to recover from anxiety, depression and eating disorder following a suicide attempt. The project, which Laura called UCP-UMCG, (named after the hospital in which she stayed) earned her a spot on LensCulture's list of 50 best emerging photographers for 2015 in the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards. One picture shows her staring blankly ahead while clad in a sleeveless shirt. In another, she is depicted lying on a bed, half naked. "At first, I made this complete series for myself, to deal with the difficulties and express my feelings,” she told The Mighty . "After that, I want to inspire people who are or have been in a psychiatric hospital. I want them to s...

finding cain

Search This Blog