12 people isn't a scientific study! Where is the control group? I think maybe we need a few more studies before people go out and start eating magic mushrooms to not be depressed.
I'm a bit skeptical of just one small study too. From what I am aware, there have been plenty of other 5-HT2A agonists that are not the "classic" psychedelics out there in the labs, and I rarely see them thought of as anti-depressants in Wiki pages etc. (5HT2A agonists being thought of as other treatments? Yes, treatment of migraines and glaucoma have been mentioned in some of the articles -- one example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AL-34662 -- but a lot of things seem a long way off even there.)
But there's precedent, so who knows. Remember a few years back there was several articles about ketamine being discovered to also helping major depressive disorder? These articles still appear in fact:
From what I am aware, this revelation was a big deal at a deeper level, in that it showed a new pathway to relieving depression -- glutamate. Previously I think almost all anti-depression drugs was based around serotonin. Ketamine on the other hand is an NMDA antagnoist (the NMDA receptor being one of the main binding sites of glutamate) so was completely different than SSRIs.
Hallucinations are honestly considered a "bad side effect" for a clinical anti-depressant, so there has been a fair bit of work in developing drugs that modulate the NMDA receptor / glutamate in a way that relieves major depressive disorder without the psychedelic effects. (http://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/depression/54448) I know that one of them, Rapastinel:
Has seemed to move rather quickly through the FDA clinical trials, currently phase 3 / FDA fast track.
I suppose you could attempt to gobble ketamine, too, to try to self-medicate your way out of depression. But there are risks with that approach. (Short of waiting for the big pharmaceutical approach, there are "ketamine clinics" which, while definitely "off label" / experimental, are at least a more controlled way of attempting this treatment.)
But there's precedent, so who knows. Remember a few years back there was several articles about ketamine being discovered to also helping major depressive disorder? These articles still appear in fact:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-one... http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/03/what-its-like-to-treat-...
From what I am aware, this revelation was a big deal at a deeper level, in that it showed a new pathway to relieving depression -- glutamate. Previously I think almost all anti-depression drugs was based around serotonin. Ketamine on the other hand is an NMDA antagnoist (the NMDA receptor being one of the main binding sites of glutamate) so was completely different than SSRIs.
Hallucinations are honestly considered a "bad side effect" for a clinical anti-depressant, so there has been a fair bit of work in developing drugs that modulate the NMDA receptor / glutamate in a way that relieves major depressive disorder without the psychedelic effects. (http://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/depression/54448) I know that one of them, Rapastinel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapastinel
Has seemed to move rather quickly through the FDA clinical trials, currently phase 3 / FDA fast track.
I suppose you could attempt to gobble ketamine, too, to try to self-medicate your way out of depression. But there are risks with that approach. (Short of waiting for the big pharmaceutical approach, there are "ketamine clinics" which, while definitely "off label" / experimental, are at least a more controlled way of attempting this treatment.)