UK: Research Briefing Published Wednesday, 12 February, 2025: Psychedelic-assisted therapy for mental health: Policy considerations

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58248/PB64

• A growing number of clinical trials have shown that psychedelic drugs (such as LSD and ketamine), in combination with therapy, can be used to treat mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. This approach is called psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT).
• Psychedelic drugs are legally controlled. Except for ketamine, they are in schedule 1 under the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. Drugs in schedule 1 have no recognised medicinal use.
• Schedule 1 drugs have the greatest restrictions on research into their medical potential. Research in universities and hospitals requires a Home Office licence. Home Office licensing requirements can make conducting clinical trials using psychedelic drugs expensive, time-consuming, and logistically difficult.
• Academic researchers, mental health charities, patients, and some MPs have called for certain schedule 1 psychedelic drugs to be moved into schedule 2, while retaining their status as class A drugs, to remove barriers to clinical trials. They argued that some evidence showed the medicinal potential of psychedelic drugs, and therefore their schedule 1 status is no longer appropriate.
• Some policymakers have stated that legitimate research with psychedelic drugs must ensure that the drugs are not diverted or misused. Others are concerned that negative effects experienced by some recreational psychedelic drug users will also occur during therapy.
• In 2022, the government said in response to a petition that there were no plans to move psilocybin, the psychedelic substance in ‘magic mushrooms’, to schedule 2.
• A 2023 Home Affairs Committee report recommended “urgent” rescheduling of psychedelic drugs to enable larger clinical trials to take place, to better understand the safety and efficacy of PAT.
• The government responded by commissioning the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to consider “barriers to research”. In 2023, the ACMD published a report which evaluated ways to make research with schedule 1 drugs, including PAT clinical trials, easier to conduct. The report discussed the implications of rescheduling some schedule 1 drugs. As of February 2025, the government is yet to respond to the ACMD report.
• POST published Rapid Response articles in 2023 and 2024 summarising the evidence base for PAT in the treatment of addiction, eating disorders, PTSD, anxiety disorders and depression.