Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Elly Vintiadis who recently guest-edited a special issue of Philosophical Psychology on psychedelic-assisted therapy and wrote a free access introduction to the special issue entitled The Promises and Perils of the Psychedlic Turn in Psychiatry . Elly Vintiadis Psychedelic substances have been part of human culture for centuries, used in ritual, healing and spiritual contexts to induce altered states of consciousness that could bring insight and change. In recent years, they have re-emerged in psychiatry in psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), a therapeutic framework in which substances such as psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ketamine, or ibogaine are administered in controlled conditions, accompanied by preparation, supervision and integration. Research into psychedelic therapies flourished in the mid-20th century but came to a halt in the early 1970s, driven by shifting social attitudes and the onset of the War on Drugs. With their classification as Schedule I substances under ...

This post is by Tulio Giraldi . Tulio Giraldi is a researcher and teacher of pharmacology and clinical psychology at the University of Trieste, currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Global Health & Social Science at the King’s College London.  The topics of his basic and clinical research have been cancer chemotherapy, together with the pharmacology of the central nervous system and the responses to stress. More recently, he has been researching the role of genetic polymorphisms in mental health, and the pharmacogenetics of the response of psychiatric drugs. In this post he talks about his book Unhappiness, Sadness and Depression . According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an epidemic of depression is spreading around the world, expected to become by 2020 the second leading cause of world disability and by 2030 to be the largest contributor to disease burden. The serious concern for depression and antidepressant drugs led me to analyze all the a...