Science is still lagging behind when it comes to defining and treating the “mental disorder” that we call depression. Right now science can not tell the difference between the brain of a person who has depression and the brain of someone who doesn’t have it. There are some indications that a lack of certain neurotransmitters (such as serotonin) are involved, but it is a much more complex process that creates and heals depression. Science is still mostly in the dark about the affects of depression on the brain as well as how antidepressants actually work. Isn’t it weird that they are so widely prescribed when so little is known about their functioning? The conventional contemporary treatment procedures for depression are from the 1940’s and 50’s. The so-called SRRI medication (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) prevent serotonin, the happy hormone, from being reabsorbed in the brain cells, which makes it available for stimulation to synapses various times. But at the same time the conventional medication does not work reliably and for everybody in the same way. Especially in mild cases of depression it is argued that this line of anti-depressants is not much more effective than a combination of various other treatment forms. Many unwanted side effects come with the medication, even suicidal tendencies are among them. This seems totally contra-indicative, because when you’re depressed, having suicidal tendencies is exactly what you don’t want to have to deal with. With the current rise of science around psychedelic substances a possible new line of anti-depressants is coming into focus. The science around psychedelics has only recently been rehabilitated, since national and international drug laws have since the 1960s consecutively prohibited the use and research of most of the psychedelic substances. If we look behind the panic screen of public moral and unscientific drug laws we can find very promising results in studies done around ayahuasca (the visionary Amazonian plant brew), psilocybin (the active chemical in “magic mushrooms”) and MDMA also known as ecstasy in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
Draulio Barros de Araujo is a professor of neuroimaging at the Brain Institute (UFRN) in Natal, Brazil. He has been part of a preliminary study where six depressed patients received an open label single dose of Ayahuasca. With significant reduction of the depressive symptoms of up to 82% in the patients measured at 1, 7 and 21 days after the study, ayahuasca seems like a promising new approach to treating depression. The next step before such a new medication can be available to the masses are double blind placebo controlled studies on a larger scale. This means that in the study ayahuasca has to be served as well as a placebo that has no chemical interaction with the patients brain, and neither the patient nor the researcher, at the moment of administering the dose, know whether ayahuasca or a placebo is given. While the licensing process might still take a while, we can help spread information on these hopeful new alternative treatments, in the name of everyone suffering from depression and their families.