14 DAY TRIAL // People who use psychedelic drugs do not have a higher risk of developing mental health problems at some point in their lives, a new study claims.
On the contrary, evidence suggests that, when compared to people who have never consumed psychedelic drugs, users are less likely to suffer from such conditions.
This research into whether or not psychedelic drugs can be linked to a higher risk of mental health problems was carried out by scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
The specialists' work boiled down to their compiling and analyzing data provided by the 2001-2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
All in all, they looked into the medical records of roughly 130,000 people. 22,000 of those taken into consideration for this study had admitted to taking psychedelic drugs at least once.
The goal was to determine whether the frequency of specific mental health problems, i.e. general psychological distress, anxiety disorder, mood disorder and psychosis, was higher among people who had used LSD, magic mushrooms, peyote and the like.
It turns out this was not the case.
As clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen explains, “After adjusting for other risk factors, lifetime use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline or peyote, or past year use of LSD was not associated with a higher rate of mental health problems or receiving mental health treatment.”
On the contrary, the information collected while carrying out this investigation suggests that lifetime and even past year use of psychedelic drugs were linked to significantly lower rates of serious psychological distress.
However reassuring these findings might be, the researchers wish to emphasize that, all things considered, it could happen that certain people can be negatively affected by psychedelic substances.
“We cannot exclude the possibility that use of psychedelics might have a negative effect on mental health for some individuals or groups, perhaps counterbalanced at a population level by a positive effect on mental health in others,” they point out in their paper.
A detailed account of this study and its findings was published in yesterday's issue of the journal PLOS ONE.