New Therapies Help Patients With Dementia Cope With Depression

Dec 08, 2019 · 6 comments
GreatKin (California)
It seems to me that to feel depressed and anxious after such a diagnosis is normal. How about some grief counseling?
Laird (Montrose, CO)
MCI is not dementia.
Sara (Oakland)
As desperate as clinicians have been to reduce suffering, wildly destructive treatments are a stain on 100 years of psychiatric interventions. The recent tsunami of enthusiasm for hallucinogens for many intractable disorders reflects a familiar hope and a reminder of the need for caution. There is no shamanic tradition in America; there is almost no reliable evidence to administer psilocybin or LSD as a therapeutic agent to drug-naive patients in great distress, dementia or end-of-life. Yes -physicians must try to do good in the face of failed conventional methods, but it is a higher priority to do no harm. Private experimentation is not a sound basis for medicalizing these substances. Careful screening, long term follow up and a coherent psychotherapeutic framework must come first.
lonna (muir beach, california)
there is research being done (again) with psilocybin at johns hopkins that has shown some promising results for depression, as many of the standard drugs have many negative side-effects. let's hope this research can continue and will provide some much needed help to so many who suffer.
OldBoatMan (Rochester, MN)
@lonna Psilocybin is a compound that I had never heard of. After exploring it on Wiki, I think there needs to be a significant amount of research on its benefits and risks. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Samantha (Oklahoma)
Psilocybin is AGE OLD but illegal since time immemorial. At the same time, It is far less harmful than Prozac, for example.