Magic Mushrooms and Meditation Tag-Team Depression

Doctors and nurses who battled COVID patients now have something surprising to help them fight their own demons: a combination of psilocybin therapy and mindfulness training that nearly doubled the relief they got from meditation alone.

The study from University of Utah Health tested 25 healthcare workers who worked directly with COVID-19 patients and were wrestling with both depression and burnout. Half received an eight-week mindfulness program. The other half got the same meditation training, plus a single 25-milligram dose of psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, administered in a group therapy setting.

The numbers tell a stark story. Depression scores in the psilocybin group dropped by 7.2 points on average, more than twice the 2.8-point drop in the meditation-only group. At the two-week mark, 46% of healthcare workers who received psilocybin alongside mindfulness were free of depression, compared to just 8% who only learned mindfulness practices.

“Depression and burnout have long been serious problems for healthcare workers. When the pandemic only worsened these effects, we felt it was crucial to try something different to understand how we can help this group of individuals who are dedicated to helping others.”

Benjamin Lewis, associate professor of psychiatry at University of Utah and lead author of the study, designed the trial with scalability in mind. Most psilocybin research uses two therapists per patient in individual sessions, an expensive model that is hard to expand. This study delivered treatment in groups instead, a more practical approach for healthcare workers looking for relief.

The Treatment Mix

Participants in the combination therapy arm started with four weeks of standard mindfulness training. Then came three group preparation sessions, followed by the psilocybin dosing day where all participants took the drug together under clinical supervision. Three integration sessions over the next two weeks helped them process the experience. Throughout, they continued their meditation practice.

The psilocybin sessions were not without their moments. Eight of the 12 participants in that group reported what researchers call a “complete mystical experience,” meaning they hit certain thresholds on multiple subscales measuring phenomena like unity with the universe and transcendence of time and space. Three people experienced nausea during their session, but it resolved on its own without medication.

What makes these results particularly interesting is what happened at the six-month follow-up. The gap between the two groups had narrowed considerably, with both showing reduced depression. Yet 53.8% of participants in the psilocybin group remained depression-free, compared to just 16.7% in the meditation-only group.

Beyond Just Feeling Better

The study also measured burnout, that particular form of professional exhaustion marked by emotional depletion and a sense of disconnection from patients. Here, too, the combination therapy showed promise, though the effects did not survive statistical correction for multiple comparisons given the small sample size.

Perhaps more telling was what happened to participants’ sense of connection to themselves and others. The healthcare workers who received psilocybin reported significantly greater feelings of connectedness, which researchers note is particularly relevant for a condition like burnout that can isolate people and erode empathy.

“This trial met its primary endpoint: group psilocybin-assisted therapy plus MBSR was associated with clinically significant improvement in depressive symptoms without serious adverse events and with greater reduction in symptoms than MBSR alone.”

The study was not without limitations. The sample was small and overwhelmingly white and female, which limits how broadly the findings apply. Participants knew whether they were getting psilocybin or not, which could have influenced results through expectation effects. The psilocybin group also received more total therapeutic contact time because of the preparation and integration sessions.

Interestingly, researchers found that higher expectations for treatment success correlated with better outcomes in the meditation-only group but not in the psilocybin group. This suggests that the mushroom compound’s effects may be less dependent on what people expect to happen than previously thought.

The pandemic amplified mental health struggles that already existed among medical professionals. Whether these findings extend to depression and burnout caused by other workplace stressors remains an open question, one that larger trials will need to answer.

PLOS Medicine: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004519