Politicians want to improve our worsening mental health with big psychiatric initiatives. The problem with this model, says historian of neuroscience Danielle Carr, is that it ignores the social and structural forces causing widespread mental suffering.
Ending the drug war would help psychiatrisy move forward with some excellent meds (psilocybin, MDMA). It would also let a lot of innocent people avoid the six year prison stint I did for growing my own medication.
So, I don’t see it as not political. But I also don’t see it as not psychiatric.
Have a friend administering psilocin/4-HO-DMT to patients for one of those psychedelic startups in Canada. Thought it was cool because the first serious psychedelic research also began in Canada in the late 40s-50s, Humphrey Osmond even coined the term “psychedelic” while experimenting with them at a mental hospital in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, in a letter addressed to Huxley. They first used them as “psychomemetics” with the understanding they mimicked the symptoms of schizophrenia, to better sympathize with the patients (this was in the days of mental institutions.) They used it for alcoholism as well apparently, Osmond said it would reveal to them how their behavior was affecting other people etc.
MDMA got submitted to the FDA recently. They’ll have to reschedule MDMA and I don’t see that happening easily even with evidence it has medical uses.
Considering cannabis is still illegal federally, I’d agree with you.
Well, do you need a psychiatrist if your life isn’t completely fucked by a drug possession conviction?
Psychiatrists are the ones doing a lot of the research.
I get your point but I find the research still important for harm reduction even if I don’t think these medicines should only be available with a prescription.
…yes, sometimes?
Although we desperately need better medications (that are affordable), this covers treatment. What’s being pointed out here is that we’re not addressing the causes. Legalization certainly helps with one cause, but there’s clearly way more contributing to the rise in mental illness which is largely being ignored.
I agree with what you’re saying and probably mostly agree with the article.
But the headline pitched it as an either/or thing (not psychiatry but politics!). My comment was meant to highlight the impact politics has had, and continues to have, on psychiatrists being able to use medicines that Western science has been well aware of the potential for in the treatment of mental illness for 50+ years.
There’s similarities in regards to body autonomy and Dr/patient autonomy with abortion access and psychiatric medicine that many people are ignorant too because of oppressive policies on the part of the Nixon administration that continue to be the status quo.
Public policy changes to address systemic causes of mental illness are absolutely needed. But pitching it in this sort of binary as the headline does misses the mark imo.