History on Depression Therapy: the Past and the Psychedelic Future

Depression, one of the popular mental illnesses, has gained more attention nowadays. You might have heard of several heartbroken news of celebrities with depression committing suicide, e.g. Alexander McQueen. Depression seems to be horrible and people are trying hard to battle it. The history of medication for depression is hard, dark, and bloody,  and we still leap in the light. Let’s review what people have done for the battle with depression. 

The Dark Times in Medication: The Lobotomy 

Lobotomy, or prefrontal leukotomy, was a psychosurgical operation developed around the 18th century.  Thereby, nerve pathways in the lobes of the brain were disengaged from those in other areas.  The surgery was simplified in the operation by Portuguese neurophysician António Egas Moniz and applied to a patient with mental illness. Pure ethyl alcohol was injected into the patient’s head to disrupt the neuronal tracts. The lessened symptoms of anxiety made the people believe the lobotomy was the cure of the mental illness, as well as the depression, and soon applied to the patients. 

Meanwhile, the first generation of psychoactive drugs was born. 

The Development of Psychoactive Drugs Brings Possibility 

In the last 50s, doubt towards the Lobotomy raised with side-effects shown on the patients, like apathy, passivity, poor concentration, and even death. At the same time, with the success of psychoactive drugs invention, people were figuring out the possibility of living with depression. 

Imipramine was one of the primitive tricyclic antidepressants, which was composed of thorazine and lithium. Imipramine was considered to treat depression by increasing norepinephrine and serotonin, which were the neurotransmitters, and blocking another transmitter, acetylcholine, to balance the concentration of different neurotransmitters in the brain. For those patients suffering from long-term depression, after receiving imipramine, their situation was relieved. 

Imipramine was set as the fundament of the psychoactive drugs. Its success not just brought the possibility of depression treatment, but the hope to the patients who were tortured by depression. 

Different psychoactive drugs were developed after imipramine. However, they cannot erase depression. Patients might be relieved after taking the pills but still not yet completely cured. 

It raised another question: can we live with depression if we cannot remove it from our lives, still for now? 

Psychedelic Drugs, Another Thread of Hopes for Depression Treatment

Nowadays, psychedelic drugs, once prohibited, have become the new aspect of psychoactive drugs development. Currently, LSD, MDMA, Ketamine, and psilocybin, are the psychedelics used in mental illness research. 

The JAMA Psychiatry has published clinical research about psilocybin-assisted therapy. The participants were randomly selected, depression patients. The effect of the psilocybin-assisted therapy on depression clients was tested. It was shown that psilocybin-assisted therapy has a great effect on depression therapy. Apart from psilocybin-assisted therapy, clinical research from Nature about MDMA-assisted therapy on severe PTSD patients showed a higher level of effectiveness and safety when compared to the controlled group. 

On the other hand, some research found that sound data is absent to support the effectiveness of depression treatment with psilocybin-assisted therapy. The clinical research compared the effectiveness of using psilocybin and escitalopram, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, on patients with mild to severe depression. Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology- Self Report (QIDS-SR) was one of the measurements. The higher the score in the QIDS-SR, the more serious symptoms of depression are shown. The result showed that the difference in score between the two groups of patients was little. 

All in all, the psychedelics, once thought to be taboos, show their potential to develop as the cure of depression. People are still working hard for the cure for mental illness, preventing tragedies like Alexander McQueen from happening again.

Written by Pence Au

Author

GeneOnline

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