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The drug MDMA and magic mushrooms may help treat mental illness, Australia’s medicines regulator says ahead of its final decision on whether to recognise the drugs.
AAP reports the Therapeutic Goods Administration looked at studies on PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, social anxiety in adults with autism, and anxiety or depression in the context of life-threatening disease.
“We conclude that MDMA and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) may show promise in highly selected populations but only where these medicines are administered in closely clinically supervised settings and with intensive professional support,” the TGA said on Thursday.
It examined studies with MDMA that found statistically significant improvements in adults who had autism and social anxiety.
Results for people who had anxiety in the context of life-threatening disease were not significant given low participant numbers.
Studies seeing whether psilocybin was effective in treating OCD symptoms found no significant effect, possibly because of low numbers and a high response to the placebo.
For people with depression or anxiety, psilocybin was as effective as the antidepressant escitalopram.
In February, the TGA handed down an interim decision against recognising the drugs to treat mental illness. It deferred a final decision pending the review on the drugs’ therapeutic value, risks and benefits.
The report will be considered by the Advisory Committee of Medicines Scheduling on 3 November ahead of a final decision due in early December.
Updated
at 3.55am EDT
2.57am EDT02:57
‘We’re not seeking in any way to constrain China’s growth’: Morrison
Scott Morrison has declared that Australia does not want to constrain China’s economic rise, saying his government is “not in the containment club”.
The prime minister, who attended the first-ever in-person meeting of leaders from the Quad in Washington DC last week, said the grouping of Australia, the US, India and Japan was “not a formal alliance” and was “not designed to be an alliance”.
In a briefing for Indian media outlets in Australia today, Morrison said he did not want to see the region in “binary terms”.
We’re not seeking in any way to constrain China’s growth – never have. We’re not in the containment club when it comes to China. We have greatly benefited from their economic development, and they have been very successful indeed, as India has, in taking millions, hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
It’s quite a remarkable economic success. This is good. We welcome that. We think that’s great. But, it’s important that as countries develop and as they grow, that they continue to be a positive and supportive influence in the region for peace and stability, and that the respect is there for all other countries in the Indo-Pacific, for their own sovereignty.
Morrison said the Quad members wanted to ensure that economic growth occurred “in a way that is inclusive and doesn’t place burdens on other countries in the Indo-Pacific, which is only reasonable, only reasonable”.
Pushing back at China’s criticism of the grouping, Morrison also said the Quad was “not exclusive”.
In the Indo-Pacific there is an increasing web of these partnerships and alliances and that only builds greater regional stability and security. It doesn’t escalate anything. In my view it reduces the risks by ensuring that it is providing a positive outcome or a positive effect in the region that deters behaviour that would be counter to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Morrison said Australia’s newly announced defence arrangement with the UK and the US – called Aukus, which will involve the delivery of nuclear-powered submarines – also “complements, rather than takes away, from what we’re doing in those other partnerships”.
Updated
at 3.06am EDT
