Why Psychedelics?
What Are Psychedelics?
The term “psychedelic” is derived from the Greek words “psyche” meaning “soul” or “mind” and “deloun,” meaning “to manifest” (Humphry Osmond 1957). Psychedelics dramatically affect perception, cognition and mood to a degree that depends on the compound and also the setting in which it is ingested.
A Critical Unmet Need
For people with psychiatric disorders who are not helped by first line treatments, available therapeutic options are very limited. This is true for depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. Therapeutic options for substance and alcohol dependence are as if not more limited. Antipsychotic drugs help people with schizophrenia achieve stability but do not prevent the development of debilitating and socially limiting functional and interpersonal impairments. A revolutionary approach to psychiatric pharmacotherapy is clearly needed.
Psychedelic Renaissance
After psychedelics were declared illegal in 1970, research ground to a virtual halt. This began to change in the 1990s and the momentum has grown incrementally. Today, an atmosphere of excitement and innovation pervades the field of psychedelic medicine as more and more clinical and preclinical researchers take up the challenge and the nascent psychedelics drug development industry grows by leaps and bounds. Most remarkably, therapeutic developments are bringing together psychotherapy and psychopharmacology even as the debate intensifies as to whether the perceptual effects of psychedelics are necessary for their therapeutic action. The potential impact of psychedelics is not limited to psychiatry. Fields such as neurology, palliative care, addiction and pain medicine are among the potential beneficiaries along with inflammatory and possibly autoimmune disorders.
Hadassah BrainLabs Meets the Challenge of Psychedelic Therapeutics
The Center for Psychedelic Research is dedicated to the discovery and development of novel, psychedelic-based treatments for psychiatric disorders. Our research is conducted by talented staff members and research students and employs the extensive infrastructure of Hadassah BrainLabs and the core facilities of Hadassah Medical Center and the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine. We are designing and testing a series of novel psychedelic-based chemical entities as well as working with naturally derived molecules. Our aim is to take initial compounds into clinical testing as soon as possible with emphasis on safety and efficacy.