Atlanta lawmaker pushes city to study psilocybin and ketamine treatments

An Atlanta city councilman has proposed a measure that could open the door to psilocybin and ketamine treatments.

City Councilor Liliana Bakhtiari says health plans for city workers should include treatments that research has shown are effective in combating mental health disorders such as PTSD.

“We should offer our employees — and especially our first responders, who are supposed to be superhuman — the same grace and provide them with a set of tools to essentially overcome this problem,” Bakhtiari said in an interview with Axios.

According to Axios, the proposal “directs the city’s human resources department to study the pros and cons of ketamine and psilocybin for treating mental health issues and whether the employee health plan could cover the treatments.” .

The outlet adds that “ketamine can be taken under the supervision of a psychiatrist” in Georgia, and that Bakhtiari “says he has used ketamine therapy to treat past trauma” and that “some sessions can cost around $350 his pocket “.

As a council member, Bakhtiari has been a strong advocate for treatment and addiction reform.

In 2022, Bakhtiari introduced a resolution that would have “formally directed police to give “lowest law enforcement priority” to investigating or arresting people for “planting, cultivating, purchasing, transporting , distributed, participated in practices with or “possessing entheogenic plants, fungi and spores or plant compounds,” Marijuana Moment reported at the time.

With a growing body of research on the effectiveness of psychedelics as a mental health treatment, more lawmakers across the country have been pushing for reform.

Earlier this year in Vermont, lawmakers passed a measure to create a task force to examine psychedelics and their application in therapy.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed a similar bill earlier this month. The measure will create the “Working Group on the Responsible Use of Natural Psychedelic Substances,” a 17-member group that will make recommendations designed to “(enable) broad, equitable, and affordable access to psychedelic substances.”

The law requires the task force to make recommendations “concerning any changes to State law, policies, and practices necessary to create a program to provide broad, equitable, and affordable access to psychedelic substances; and require the Task Force to report its findings to the Governor and the General Assembly no later than July 31, 2025.”

Meanwhile, a bill recently introduced in the New York Assembly would legalize psilcoybin service centers.

The proposal would amend existing law “with respect to promoting the health and welfare of the citizens of the State of New York by establishing a comprehensive framework supporting public health and safety through regulated adult use , support services and psilocybin cultivation. containing mushrooms.

Additionally, the bill would create the “Regulated Psilocybin Advisory Council,” comprised of 13 members who would be responsible for studying laws and policies related to psilocybin and then providing recommendations to the State Department of Health. ‘State. According to the bill’s text, the council would “develop a long-term strategic plan to ensure that psilocybin services in the State become and remain a safe, accessible, and affordable treatment option, including in therapeutic and medical treatments, for everyone aged eighteen. years and older for whom psilocybin services may be appropriate.

A study published earlier this year found that people with major depressive disorder had improvement in their symptoms after treatment with an intravenous ketamine infusion.

The report, based on a clinical trial involving 75 patients across four sites in the United States, was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Patients “received 3 IV infusions of ketamine over a period of 11 days.”

“The main exclusion criteria were psychotic symptoms, significant substance abuse, unstable medical conditions and any cannabis use. Pre-existing antidepressant treatment was continued. The primary outcome was remission measured by the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), with a secondary outcome of a 50% reduction in Beck Suicide Scale score. Safety monitoring and different infusion durations were also key parameters,” the study authors wrote.

“The consistency of results across 4 clinical sites and across multiple instruments suggests high acute efficacy and safety of IV ketamine for severe depressive episodes. The duration of the infusion did not change the results,” the authors wrote in their conclusion.

“Significantly, 40% of non-responders after a single infusion subsequently achieved remission, while only 20% of non-responders after 2 infusions achieved remission, suggesting that early response portends possible remission. Our data on the variable duration of ketamine infusion add new information on the clinical administration of this new treatment for refractory and severe patients. Our limitations included the lack of a control group, which required us to be cautious about drawing conclusions about effectiveness, outweighed by the utility of reporting “real-world” results across multiple clinical sites. We were also unable to analyze the results for bipolar disorder separately due to the small number of individuals. Together, Bio-K’s clinical results are promising and provide significant sample sizes for future biomarker analyses.