Overview
- Researchers at the University of Utah’s Huntsman Mental Health Institute randomized 25 COVID-era frontline healthcare workers to mindfulness training with or without psilocybin.
- Participants in the combination arm received one controlled 25 mg psilocybin session during week six of an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course.
- Depression scores fell by more than twice as much with psilocybin plus mindfulness compared with mindfulness alone.
- Short-term remission was higher with the combination therapy, with 46% depression-free at two weeks versus 8% in the mindfulness-only group.
- The intervention was delivered in groups to improve scalability, and the peer-reviewed PLOS Medicine report notes the small sample size and need for larger confirmatory trials (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004519).