“Revealing the Soul”: Psychedelics and the Future of Mental Health Care
By Kaylee Davis
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Image courtesy of Pixabay |
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Ayahuasca vine. Image courtesy of Appolo, Flickr |
The neural correlates of these psychedelic experiences are still largely a mystery. Research on the subject is still in its infancy but is quickly growing. Similar to the conventionally used antidepressants (i.e. selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—SSRIs), it is well established in the scientific literature that psychedelics target the brain’s serotonergic system. However, the mechanisms by which psychedelics act as agonists in this system differ greatly from that of SSRIs—specifically, psychedelics act as 5-HT2A serotonin receptor agonists to induce the characteristic states of altered consciousness (Carhart-Harris and Goodwin, 2017; Celanda et al., 2004; Carhart-Harris et al., 2018; Mahapatra and Gupta, 2017). Furthermore, new research on the neurological effects of psychedelics is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of neurobiology. For instance, the “ego dissolution” (i.e. the loss of a sense of self) and the feeling of connectedness with the world that accompanies psychedelic experiences are thought to be a result of increased global functional connectivity in the brain (Tagliazucchi et al., 2016; Carhart-Harris, et al., 2016; Atasoy et al., 2017).
More research is needed to gain a fuller understanding of these mechanisms and their connection to phenomenological states. However, even if we did have a solid neuroscientific understanding of how psychedelics help “normalize” the brain to non-depressive (or other mental) states, there is an intrinsic value in a spiritual and psychosocial understanding of mental illness and mental health. As ethicist Erik Parens would argue, when we try to reduce spiritual and psychosocial phenomena into neuroscientific and medical terms, we make a “category mistake”—“construing non-medical (or life or human) problems as medical problems, [aka] construing normal human variations as pathological” (Parens, 2011, p. 2). These experiences of an expansion of consciousness, of the connection with the wider world, and, in a sense, of transcending our sense of individual self that a psychedelic encounter engenders is the very form of “spiritual insight” that we crave.
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Image courtesy of Pixabay |
In the ritual surrounding an ayahuasca encounter described above, “conscious access to the process of symbolization [are] shaped by songs, stories, and mythological worlds that structure [the user’s] visions.” In effect, “these prepare the patients for the experiences, and enable them to assimilate effects through collective motifs, rather than be flooded with unconscious personal material” (Winkelman, 2014, p. 8). Thus, if in research and treatment we strip the psychedelic experience from the creative aspect of the healer, shaman, or guide, I fear that we will lose a necessary component of the original healing tradition—specifically, the spiritual aspect that allows users to integrate their experience into their daily lives (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018). While we do not have to adopt every aspect of the traditional ayahuasca ceremony (or that of other traditional psychedelic substances), when we research and, eventually, use psychedelics in clinical settings we must do so with a holistic understanding of the human psyche.
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Kaylee Davis graduated from Hendrix College with a BA in Philosophy in 2018. She is currently a student in MA Bioethics program at Emory Univerisity. She plans to pursue a career in medicine after graduating from the program, with a focus on integrative family medicine.
References
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- Carhart-Harris, R.L., & Goodwin, G. (2017). The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present, and Future. Neuropsychopharmacology 42, 2105-2106. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5603818/.
- Carhart-Harris, R.L., Muthukumaraswamy, S., Roseman, L. et al (2016). Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. PNAS 113 (17), 4853-4858. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1518377113.
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Want to cite this post?
Davis, K. (2019). “Revealing the Soul”: Psychedelics and the Future of Mental Health Care. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2019/05/revealing-soul-psychedelics-and-future.html.