Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

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:

These master glassblowers make the difficult look easy

I've never seen Glas before and I'm absolutely delighted that Aeon Magazine uploaded the short doc on its Vimeo channel . Directed by Bert Haanstra, the 10-minute film about glass making won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary in 1959. "[ Glas ] contrasts the production of hand made crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, nearly 60 years after it was made."

Simon Beck creates giant 'Game of Thrones' snow mural

It's been a few months since I last checked in on Simon Beck (previously here ), who specializes in making ornate snow murals with just his snowshoes. Recently the British artist was commissioned by Sky Atlantic to create a promotional art for Game of Thrones : a massive direwolf symbol the size of two and a half football pitches. According to Digital Spy , it took Simon 13 hours, 64,800 steps, and 32.5 kilometers to complete the artwork, which is the sigil of the House Stark of Winterfell. The result is mind blowing.