"Just from working with a few psychiatrists for the past month, none seemed to be enthused about trialing or studying psychedelics for depressed patients." How

"Just from working with a few psychiatrists for the past month, none seemed to be enthused about trialing or studying psychedelics for depressed patients." How old are these psychiatrists? Many psychiatrists grew up during the days of prohibition and paranoia about psychedelics, and their training exclusively focused on treating depression with non-psychedelic antidepressant drugs.. not to mention all the kickbacks that psychiatrists received from the pharma companies peddling those antidepressants. So I'm not at all surprised to hear skepticism from some of the more conservative ones. That said, there's been an overwhelming amount of research showing the effectiveness of psychedelics on treatment-resistant depression -- effectiveness that dwarfs the effect of antidepressants. So many other psychiatrists and therapists are much more open to trying them than the psychiatrists you met with. "psychedelics used to be researched for military purposes and mind control, wondering if this is still a risk factor for patients?" They were not found to be effective at "mind-control" and the "research" (if it could be called that) was abandoned. All such abuse resulted in was traumatized, broken people. Really horrific stuff. See the history for MKUltra[1] for details. It's still a concern that you might be unlucky enough to work with an abusive psychiatrist or therapist.. so you should really be vetting the people you work with very carefully. That said, there are training, certification and licensing procedures and organizations that are there to help prevent abuse and deal with it if/when it happens. For example, see: [2] Also, at least with MDMA therapy the standard is to have two therapists with you at all times, to decrease the chance that one of them will abuse you. Also, at least in the studies, it has been common to videotape the sessions, so there is a record of what happened, which should decrease the risk of people completely getting away with abuse. But, yeah, it's still a risk and I don't think any therapy will be completely risk free... especially not psychedelic therapy, where the patient is so incredibly vulnerable and suggestible during the session. That's why, again, it's very important that you vet the therapist you're working with to best of your ability before you trust them with your mind. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra [2] - https://maps.org/safety/ https://maps.org/safety/