Indiana funding magic mushroom research
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
While Indiana is generally late to the party on drug reform and deregulation — ie, legal weed — the Hoosier state is at the forefront of medical research into psychedelics as a mental health treatment.
Why it matters: Research has highlighted the promise of psychedelic compounds in treating mental illness — like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
- A team from Indiana University, with backing from the state, is contributing to that research with a clinical trial treating veterans and first responders suffering from treatment-resistant depression and substance use disorder with psilocybin, also known as "magic mushrooms."
The big picture: The federal government gave psychedelics research the green light in April, and some in the industry expect FDA approval for a psychedelic treatment to come as early as this year.
- Veterans have emerged as a leading group campaigning to take psychedelic therapy mainstream.
State of play: Helen Fox, an associate professor of psychiatry at the IU School of Medicine, says research has already demonstrated "unprecedented findings" for psychedelics in treatment-resistant depression and other mental health issues.
- Now, she said, studies are becoming more nuanced.
- Her taxpayer-funded clinical trial seeks to answer which dose of psilocybin (5 mg, 10 mg, or 25 mg) is safe and effective to treat depression and substance use.
- Patients receive a single dose, paired with six weeks of psychotherapy.
What they're saying: "We can be optimistic," Fox said during a recent panel discussion about the role of psychedelics in the mental health care of veterans. "We have to be cautiously optimistic."
Zoom in: Fox's research is funded in part by the Therapeutic Psilocybin Research Fund, created by the Indiana General Assembly in 2024 to help Hoosier research institutions study the use of psilocybin to treat mental health and other medical conditions.
- Last year's budget allocated $300,000 to the fund for this year and next.
What's next: Sen. Scott Baldwin (R-Noblesville) says he'll be advocating for continued funding in the next budget-writing session, starting in January.
- There's already been a request to do so, he tells Axios, from the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs and Mental Health America of Indiana.
Yes, but: Indiana providing funding for research is not the same as legalizing psychedelics, which are still Schedule I drugs, or even considering it.
- "I don't know if we're going to get to the point where we're going to legalize something until we see the results of the study," Baldwin says. "And we're not going to get there until we continue to fund the research."
The bottom line: "We need to keep rolling with the research," Fox says. "The program we've kick-started at IU, I think, is going to go places."
- "If Indiana gets this right, it will really showcase Indiana as a state that can support not only innovative research, but rigorous research."