Researchers have said psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy may hold promise for both improving health and saving costs, but that the current therapeutic approach is poorly targeted.
As research into psychedelic compounds for the treatment of mental health conditions rises, a new best-practice standard of care is needed.
A new report, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, coins the term “behavioural psychedelics” which is “the study of psychedelics to foster intentional changes in habits and behaviours to improve health and resilience.”
The authors from UCLA Health and Harvard Medical School have stated that ensuring healthcare can benefit from psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy requires developing rigorous and standardised methods to study and apply results.
The authors state: “Looking forward, we believe that further refinement is needed to operationalise and test [the] components to establish a best-practice standard of care for treating psychiatric, addiction, somatic, and behavioural health problems.
“Changing human behaviour may sound simple but is exceedingly difficult, especially for behaviours that arise from years of thinking and acting in relatively rigid, routinised ways.”
George Slavich, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at UCLA and research scientist at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, as well as Edmund Neuhaus, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard, commented: “One emerging strategy for accomplishing behaviour change involves using psychedelic compounds to make the mind more malleable and open.”
The concept of behavioural psychedelics is, according to the researchers, intended to develop “targeted approaches for therapeutic change that help people achieve enduring functional improvements in self-care, social connection, and family, school, and community responsibilities to help them live the life they desire.”
They state: “Psychedelic compounds have the potential to turbocharge the process of transforming the mind, and the race to realise their benefits is in full swing.
“To maximise these benefits, we believe this work should include behaviour as a treatment target with measurable treatment metrics to establish best practices and guidelines.”
And that: “A structured approach guides behaviour and habit changes and provides concrete ways for an individual to monitor progress and adjust goals, on their terms, to improve health, resilience, and connection — all in stark contrast to living with chronic disease.”
A conflict of interest was cited with author Edmund C. Neuhaus as senior director of psychology for atai Life Sciences.
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