Psychedelic Clinical Trials for Patients With Terminal Illness Set to Begin at St. Vincent Hospital

by Eric M Fortier

Dr. Margaret Ross, Clinical psychologist with Psychosocial Cancer Care and Palliative Care at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, is leading a study recruiting terminally ill patients to participate in a guided psychedelic psychotherapy trial with synthetic psilocybin, set to begin by April 2019.

Confronting terminal illness can lead to a devastating sense of demoralization, loss of hope, meaning, desire for hastened death, depression, and anxiety. Terminal cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world. Cancer will take one in four of us, and almost half of us will face it—at least once, at a rate of 1.6 million people in the US alone every year.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins, NYU and UCLA made headlines in 2016 when they showed that a single six to eight hour guided psilocybin session led to overwhelming improvements in end-of-life anxiety, depression and quality of life for about 70% of patients. Changes were confirmed by relatives, and tended to last many months or more. These studies were featured in the documentary film A New Understanding–The Science of Psilocybin (2016), along with interviews with the participants, researchers and clinicians involved.

These clinical trials are conducted under strictly controlled conditions with medical oversight and key exclusion criteria (such as having a family history of psychotic illness). Although there have been no reported serious adverse events (SAEs) in the past 15 years with over 2000 doses of psilocybin administered in a clinical setting, unsupervised use still carries risks that are not yet fully understood.