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by bbayles·11d ago·view on hn ↗
Anecdata, but an acquaintance of mine struggled with lifelong anorexia. Severe enough that he was hospitalized a few times. With great effort he could cling to the bottom of the "normal BMI" range, but his life was generally ruled by the eating disorder - he couldn't have meals with people, he had to do various exercise rituals.

He was an early participant in one of these psychedelic studies a few years ago. After the first treatment, he said he couldn't really tell if it had any effect. But six months later, he was totally changed - able to function almost normally.

We should exercise our usual amount of skepticism about miracle treatments, but my hope is that his experience can be replicated.

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Science generally works on IF Then statements when it comes to treatment, IF you take this drug your blood pressure will increase, IF you exercise more your life expectancy will increase, with mental health issues there very few IF then treatments, there are only if maybe treatments, this is for a slew of reasons such as how we don't really understand it, symptoms can be caused by many different underlying issues, and legal risk of prescribing something that isn't proven effective. That being said, the IF maybe treatments are the only way to treat mental health, Psilocybin falls in this category.
Just about all common psychological medication (by which I mean antidepressants, antipsychotics, ADHD meds, etc) have a pretty weakly measurable effect and effectiveness. If you take them, your symptoms might improve. In some casesthey'll get a lot worse. In many cases it will have no effect on your symptoms. There are lots of side effects.

What's the difference here?