Finding studies
Finding studies
Take this into the appointment.
Saves the questions and what to expect into your notes, next to the visit they belong to.
Josh Woolley, BS PhD MD
CONTACT
Lead
VA Office of Research and Development
Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects 1 in 8 Veterans, leading to functional impairment, increased mortality, and high suicide risk. Veterans face complex psychiatric and medical comorbidities that often render conventional treatments inadequate, creating critical gaps in their mental health care. Psilocybin has emerged as a promising candidate treatment for MDD, but its safety and efficacy remain unclear. To address this gap, the investigators propose a four-site randomized clinical trial (RCT; N=120) to evaluate psilocybin-assisted Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (PACT) specifically for Veterans with MDD. The trial will determine if and how PACT decreases depressive and related symptoms, providing essential data that may lead to the development of a novel, efficacious treatment and guide potential VHA implementation. Our study incorporates Veteran input to ensure real-world relevance and addresses key limitations of previous psilocybin trials. The investigators will systematically evaluate safety, tolerability, and acceptability using gold-standard measures. PACT combines a single dose of psilocybin with a brief course of standardized, VA-endorsed ACT, overcoming issues of non-standardized psychotherapy that have hindered reproducibility and scalability. To tackle ineffective masking-which has plagued prior trials-the investigators employ a rigorous control condition pairing identical psychotherapy with a psychoactive multidrug placebo that mimics psilocybin's subjective effects, along with incomplete disclosure to minimize expectancy biases. A representative sample ensures generalizability to the VHA population, while mechanistic evaluations will inform a precision medicine approach that may extend to other disorders with similar neurobiological dysfunctions.
Age
18–70
Sex
ALL
Healthy volunteers
Not accepted
