Link to actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01744-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01744-z These open-label studies also need

Link to actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01744-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01744-z These open-label studies also need to be carefully evaluated within the context of their selection criteria. One of the biggest challenges with open-label studies for psychedelics is that they tend to collect "true believers" who are already convinced that psychedelics will cure their depression. They seek these studies out specifically for the opportunity to receive psychedelics, often because they've read books and news articles telling them it will be successful. Notably, 1/4 of participants admitted to past psychedelic use (and I suspect the actual number is much higher, given that study participants often lie if they think a certain answer might exclude them from receiving the drug they want) The study also explicitly required treatment-resistant patients to have tried and failed multiple antidepressants in the past, which explains the low response rate to the SSRI arm: > The open-label trial had the additional criteria of TRD, as defined by no improvement despite multiple courses of antidepressant medication (mean = 4.6 ± 2.6 past medications; range, 2–11)39. Patients were asked whether they had previous experience of using psychedelics. In the open-label trial, 25% had previous experience. Similarly, in the DB-RCT, 31% of patients in the psilocybin arm and 24% in the escitalopram arm had previous experience.