Imperial College London
Alternate

Professor Robin Carhart-Harris

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Brain Sciences

Visiting Professor
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7992r.carhart-harris

 
 
//

Assistant

 

Miss Bruna Cunha +44 (0)20 7594 7992

 
//

Location

 

Burlington DanesHammersmith Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Marrocu:2024:10.1177/02698811241232548,
author = {Marrocu, A and Kettner, H and Weiss, B and Zeifman, RJ and Erritzoe, D and Carhart-Harris, RL},
doi = {10.1177/02698811241232548},
journal = {J Psychopharmacol},
pages = {225--235},
title = {Psychiatric risks for worsened mental health after psychedelic use.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02698811241232548},
volume = {38},
year = {2024}
}
Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - BACKGROUND: Resurgent psychedelic research has largely supported the safety and efficacy of psychedelic therapy for the treatment of various psychiatric disorders. As psychedelic use and therapy increase in prevalence, so does the importance of understanding associated risks. Cases of prolonged negative psychological responses to psychedelic therapy seem to be rare; however, studies are limited by biases and small sample sizes. The current analytical approach was motivated by the question of whether rare but significant adverse effects have been under-sampled in psychedelic research studies. METHODS: A "bottom margin analysis" approach was taken to focus on negative responders to psychedelic use in a pool of naturalistic, observational prospective studies (N = 807). We define "negative response" by a clinically meaningful decline in a generic index of mental health, that is, one standard error from the mean decrease in psychological well-being 4 weeks post-psychedelic use (vs pre-use baseline). We then assessed whether a history of diagnosed mental illness can predict negative responses. RESULTS: We find that 16% of the cohort falls into the "negative responder" subset. Parsing the sample by self-reported history of psychiatric diagnoses, results revealed a disproportionate prevalence of negative responses among those reporting a prior personality disorder diagnosis (31%). One multivariate regression model indicated a greater than four-fold elevated risk of adverse psychological responses to psychedelics in the personality disorder subsample (b = 1.425, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: We infer that the presence of a personality disorder may represent an elevated risk for psychedelic use and hypothesize that the importance of psychological support and good therapeutic alliance may be increased in this population.
AU  - Marrocu,A
AU  - Kettner,H
AU  - Weiss,B
AU  - Zeifman,RJ
AU  - Erritzoe,D
AU  - Carhart-Harris,RL
DO  - 10.1177/02698811241232548
EP  - 235
PY  - 2024///
SP  - 225
TI  - Psychiatric risks for worsened mental health after psychedelic use.
T2  - J Psychopharmacol
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02698811241232548
UR  - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38491857
VL  - 38
ER  -
Download