Psychedelic drugs recognised as medicines for mental health
Australia has become the first country to recognise psychedelic drugs as medicines, after the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) took researchers by surprise and approved the psychedelic substances in magic mushrooms and MDMA for use by people with certain mental health conditions.
MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, will be considered Schedule 8 drugs – meaning they are approved for controlled use when prescribed by a psychiatrist – from July, after the TGA acknowledged that there were few other options for patients with specific treatmentresistant mental illnesses.
The changes will allow MDMA to be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin to be used for treatment-resistant depression. They will still be considered prohibited substances – or Schedule 9 drugs – for all other uses.
Prescribing will be limited to psychiatrists, who will need to be approved by the TGA. However,
the TGA has not yet evaluated any approved products that contain psilocybin or MDMA.
Stephen Bright, director of the Psychedelic Research in Science and Medicine charity, said the decision was not anticipated by the sector, ‘‘given that Australia is such a conservative country’’.
‘‘There are no products available, and aside from myself and a handful of colleagues, there’s noone trained to provide the treatment. We’re waiting for a bit more information.’’
Associate Professor David
Caldicott, an emergency department doctor who appeared at the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide to advocate that the drugs be used for returned soldiers suffering from psychological trauma, said he was pleasantly surprised by the decision. He said opposition to the use of MDMA in therapeutics had long been a question of politics rather than science.
MDMA was developed by German pharmaceutical company Merck in 1912, and was used by some psychiatrists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was banned in the 1980s after it began to be widely used recreationally.
The TGA’s decision said it considered several thousand written public submissions in making its call, and that the benefits to patients, paired with tight controls, outweighed the risks.
The judgment cited a study on single-dose use of psilocybin, published in the New England Journal of Medicine last November, which the TGA said had further strengthened ‘‘the already promising body of evidence’’ for the drug’s efficacy in dealing with treatment-resistant depression.