Safety and Efficacy of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases

Gasser, Peter; Holstein, Dominique Hans; Michel, Yvonne; Doblin, Rick; Yazar-Klosinski, Berra; Passie, Torsten; Brenneisen, Rudolf Max (2014). Safety and Efficacy of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases. Journal of nervous and mental disease, 202(7), pp. 513-520. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 10.1097/NMD.0000000000000113

[img]
Preview
Text
Safety_and_Efficacy_of_Lysergic_Acid.99925.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (CC-BY-NC-ND).

Download (539kB) | Preview

A double-blind, randomized, active placebo-controlled pilot study was conducted to examine safety and efficacy of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)-assisted psychotherapy in 12 patients with anxiety associated with life-threatening diseases. Treatment included drug-free psychotherapy sessions supplemented by two LSD-assisted psychotherapy sessions 2 to 3 weeks apart. The participants received either 200 μg of LSD (n = 8) or 20 μg of LSD with an open-label crossover to 200 μg of LSD after the initial blinded treatment was unmasked (n = 4). At the 2-month follow-up, positive trends were found via the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) in reductions in trait anxiety (p = 0.033) with an effect size of 1.1, and state anxiety was significantly reduced (p = 0.021) with an effect size of 1.2, with no acute or chronic adverse effects persisting beyond 1 day after treatment or treatment-related serious adverse events. STAI reductions were sustained for 12 months. These results indicate that when administered safely in a methodologically rigorous medically supervised psychotherapeutic setting, LSD can reduce anxiety, suggesting that larger controlled studies are warranted.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License, where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy
04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR)
04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR) > DBMR Forschung Mu35 > Forschungsgruppe Phytopharmakologie, Bioanalytik & Pharmakokinetik [discontinued]
04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR) > DBMR Forschung Mu35 > Forschungsgruppe Phytopharmakologie, Bioanalytik & Pharmakokinetik [discontinued]

UniBE Contributor:

Holstein, Dominique Hans, Brenneisen, Rudolf Max

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health

ISSN:

0022-3018

Publisher:

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Language:

English

Submitter:

Verena de Serra Frazao-Bill

Date Deposited:

18 Mar 2014 12:48

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:31

Publisher DOI:

10.1097/NMD.0000000000000113

PubMed ID:

24594678

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.46004

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/46004

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback