António Vaz Carneiro: "This therapy will solve the problem of thousands of people."

After The Clinic of Change's 1st Scientific Conference on Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy, we heard from António Vaz Carneiro, MD, President of ISBE, retired Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon and Director of Cochrane Portugal.

Watch the video with the testimony.

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António Vaz Carneiro's statements on Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy:

The big challenge we have today is not just prevention, but also saving the suffering and mortality, where appropriate, of the most seriously ill. In the case of mental health, this is particularly true. Why is this particularly true? Because there is a percentage of patients who are untreatable. They even start to respond initially, but after one, two, five years they stop responding, and we don't have any options for them.

This new methodology, with these new drugs, which are lining up to treat high-risk patients in psychiatry, patients who are depressed and no longer respond to other therapies, which is called therapy-resistant depression, has immense value. And it has immense value because it will solve the problem of thousands and thousands of people.

And fortunately, because unfortunately this isn't always the case, the scientific evidence that has been gathered through well-designed studies is very good. It gives us an idea of efficacy, which is remarkable, but also of safety.

Right now, I would say that this is a standard, it is an example, it is a case study of how to approach mental illness in a structured, scientifically sound way and with very rigorous methodological processes.

Conclusions of the conference on Psychotherapy with Psychedelics

There are three points to take away from the Scientific Conference. Firstly, to discuss the impact of ketamine [or ketamine] on specific patients with therapy-resistant depression. This was very important, because it showed the quality of the evidence for this area.

Secondly, in a broader sense, this new class of potential drugs, which are called... I wouldn't say hallucinogens, but let's call them that. Clearly they will have an important place once again for high-risk patients.

And thirdly, to raise awareness of how difficult it is to carry out clinical studies with these substances. As has been said, most of them don't exist for us to use, or rather, they are classified as illegal. Moral of the story: I don't have a factory, a company that makes these medicines for me. This is an additional complication, but one that I think is on the way to being clearly resolved.

Finally, there is the extraordinary potential, which is very exciting, that we can use this in the area of addiction. That's what it would be for me here, not just for depression, but the addiction areas have many more people than the severely depressed without therapy. So we leave here with our hearts high and with the hope that this will all work out.

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