3 ms·
At some point a treatment is effective enough that it stretches the credibility of placebo effect. And even if you hold onto the placebo effect, that’s just the
by travisjungroth 3y ago
At some point a treatment is effective enough that it stretches the credibility of placebo effect. And even if you hold onto the placebo effect, that’s just the mechanism. It doesn’t make it any less effective. If you have a treatment that has an extremely strong impact on depression, it seems worth continuing to study and to also distribute it more broadly. Whether it’s because of psychedelics or the thought of them, people are getting helped.
Your suggestion would only see the difference between the drugs. They both could be wildly more effective than antidepressants but similar to each other, and that study wouldn’t show it.
- cubefox 3y agoYeah. If the psilocybin effect was merely a placebo effect, that effect would probably wear off after a while, and it would stop working. So this is detectable, though not in a short term trial. The proposal with using both psilocybin and LSD is based on this assumption: If both substances yield a similar outcome, it is more likely that they both don't work rather than that they both do work (to a similar degree). Presumably the prior probability that two hallucinogens treat depression is rather low. Because most substances don't treat any disorders, let alone depression in particular.