What is Psychedelic-Assisted Palliative Care?
Palliative care helps patients and their families through the intense hardships of serious and even life-threatening illnesses. But what is psychedelic-assisted palliative care? How might it be beneficial not only to individual patients, but to those who support them?
Palliative care is a form of medical support that helps people navigate serious illnesses. It’s not focused on the disease or the singular patient. Palliative care also assists the family and other caregivers whose lives are also affected by the patient’s illness.
Palliative care helps patients improve their quality of life, providing relief and support in the face of pain, nausea, and emotional conditions such as fear, anxiety, and depression. Many palliative care programs also offer practical and logistical help with things like finances, housing, and more. And they often include spiritual guidance, too.
Palliative care is a holistic, team-based form of care involving medical and mental health providers, spiritual leaders, and more. And psychedelic-assisted palliative care is one potential tool that may provide help for certain patients.
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What is psychedelic-assisted palliative care?
The first time you encounter the phrase psychedelic-assisted palliative care, there’s a good chance the word "psychedelic" is off-putting to you. It’s a word we associate less with medicine, and more with teenagers going to rock concerts. But in practice, these two concepts couldn’t be any further removed from one another.
So what is psychedelic-assisted palliative care exactly? Well, let’s start with what psychedelic-assisted palliative care isn’t. Psychedelic-assisted palliative care does not refer to or involve casual, recreational, unsupervised psychedelic drug use.
Psychedelic-assisted palliative care involves the use of psychedelic substances in a controlled medical or research setting, with extensive psychological preparation and continuous clinical monitoring. And for certain patients undergoing palliative care, psychedelic-assisted therapy can potentially improve outcomes in meaningful ways.
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How does psychedelic-assisted palliative care help?
Traditional pharmacology often struggles with offering relief from particular aspects of psychological distress. But psychedelic-assisted palliative care can help patients facing:
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Fear of death, also known as thanatophobia
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Losses of dignity or meaning
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Severe existential distress
In controlled studies, psychedelic-assisted therapy has been associated with rapid reductions in anxiety and depression, reduced fear of death, improved acceptance of mortality, and even a greater sense of meaning and connectedness. And the effects are qualitatively different from standard antidepressant use.
Having said that, we also need to point out that psychedelic-assisted palliative care is still an emerging field in its infancy. It is not available to every patient, nor is it appropriate for every patient. And it’s intended to be adjunctive care — It’s not a cure, and it’s not a one-stop solution for the issues it can help treat, either.
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Psychedelic-assisted therapy shows promise
Many psychedelic drugs are classified as schedule I drugs under U.S. federal law. Research takes place under FDA-approved clinical trials. And while some local and state-level reforms do exist, such as supervised psilocybin programs, the use of psychedelic substances in palliative care is not yet considered a standard medical practice.
Put another way: as it stands today, psychedelic-assisted therapy isn’t something most palliative care patients have access to. This is still an emerging field of science, one that requires continued research and clinical exploration.
That said, the future does look promising for this field. Clinical trials with psychedelic-assisted therapy have shown impressive results. And as psychedelic-assisted therapy continues to grow as a credible field of practice, we’re hopeful that psychedelic-assisted palliative care will continue improving in functional and practical use, and with an ongoing dedication to the safety of patients as well.