Approach to psychedelics 'ignorant' in mental health crisis

“Mental illness is now the biggest health burden in Australia. Treatment innovation has stalled and we’re still using treatments today which work in the same way as the treatments we used in the 1950s and 1960s.” 

“Mental illness is now the biggest health burden in Australia. Treatment innovation has stalled and we’re still using treatments today which work in the same way as the treatments we used in the 1950s and 1960s.” 

A world leading specialist in psychedelic-assisted therapies has hit out against Australia’s drug regulator, labelling its approach to psychedelics as misinformed and ignorant of the country’s unfolding mental health crisis, after it advised against ending their clinical prohibition in an interim ruling last month.

David Nutt, recognised as the foremost authority in psychedelic treatments for mental health, lashed the Therapeutic Goods Administration for being “desperate to find any excuse” to reject the use of psychedelics, despite their “indisputable” ability to produce improvements in patient’s mental health. 

Professor Nutt, who is set to deliver a keynote address on the history and myths of psychedelic-assisted therapies in Sydney and Melbourne, met with the TGA’s advisory committee on Monday in a bid to persuade the regulator to lift its prohibition on Psilocybin and MDMA as prescribed medicines for people under clinically administered conditions.

Following the meeting he said the committee was guilty of “rehearsing the old war on drugs narrative”, adding that it was “paradoxical” none of the experts is a trained psychiatrist. 

“Mental illness is now the biggest health burden in Australia. Treatment innovation has stalled and we’re still using treatments today which work in the same way as the treatments we used in the 1950s and 1960s.” 

“Psilocybin and MDMA produce profound improvements, which are enduring after just one or two doses,” Professor Nutt said. 

“This is a paradigm shift in the treatment of mental illness … It’s fully underpinned by modern brain science and it‘s not just saying ‘they work’; we can actually say ‘we know how they work’ and they work differently from other treatments.”

In October, the regulator handed down an interim-decision based on earlier applications, supporting the use of Psilocybin and MDMA in clinically controlled settings, noting it would not amend the drugs for rescheduling. 

With the endorsement of Professor Nutt, Mind Medicine Australia will make a new submission to the TGA on Thursday in a bid to overturn the interim decision, with a final decision expected in December. 

“The [TGA] panel is desperate to find any excuse to say no. They have presented ten justifications or concerns, but none of them can sustain any kind of intellectual interrogation,” Professor Nutt said. 

“Their expert panel essentially seems to believe the misinformation about the medicines that was put about in the 1970s to justify them being banned … They seem to have simply bought into this idea that these drugs are very, very harmful.” 

“But in fact, even when used recreationally, or using one or two doses in a clinical setting they are not harmful, some of them are massively therapeutic,” he said. 

“Horse riding is more dangerous than MDMA.”

Professor Nutt said there was no serious scientific debate about the ability of psychedelics to combat the brain circuits that drive depressive thinking, with a “psychedelic trip” able to formulate new circuits that instead drive positive thoughts. 

“What you want here in Australia is to do what other countries are doing, notably Switzerland, Israel, Canada, and now the US, which is to have compassionate access for people who failed on other treatments.”

In response to questions, the TGA said its advisory committee did not consider a change was justified because there was “insufficient scientific evidence of the therapeutic value of these substances in the treatment of mental illness”.

The regulator said it also considered an independent report on the benefits and risks of Psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of mental health disorders that was published last December. 

It concluded the risks to individuals from their use in psychotherapy and to the general public from diversion of these psychedelics would “outweigh the benefits”.

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