US regulators could soon authorise MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder after positive results in the largest clinical trial to date
By Jason Arunn Murugesu
14 September 2023
A dose of MDMA prepared for a clinical trial in PTSD
Travis Dove/Washington Post/Getty Images
A therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using the drug MDMA is likely to be approved by US regulators in the next year after the largest clinical trial to date found it was safe and effective in a diverse group of participants.
PTSD is estimated to affect 3.9 per cent of people worldwide at some point in their lives. The only pharmaceutical drugs approved to treat the condition in the US are antidepressants.
“A lot of people with PTSD are depressed and so these drugs target that depression,” says Jennifer Mitchell at the University of California, San Francisco. But this merely lessens the symptoms, rather than dealing with the cause of the condition, she says.
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Numerous studies have investigated whether MDMA, also known as ecstasy, could be used in psychotherapy to help people with PTSD. The drug puts people into a more relaxed and trusting state and dampens fearful responses when they recall past trauma, helping them to engage more openly with therapists.
“We know that MDMA facilitates the retrieval and then the reconsolidation of fear memories within the amygdala [part of the brain that regulates emotion],” says Mitchell. “And so somehow in this process of retrieval and reconsolidation, it seems that you are shedding some of the emotionality associated with the memory.”
In June, Australia became the first country in the world to allow doctors to prescribe MDMA for PTSD alongside psychological support.