This review (2025) of the Swiss limited access scheme describes how approximately 100 physicians treated 723 patients with MDMA, LSD, or psilocybin in 2024, with patients typically receiving 2-4 psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions within 12 months for treatment-resistant conditions.
Abstract of Implementing psychedelic-assisted therapy
“This article describes the Swiss limited access program for psychedelic/3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted therapy. The Swiss Federal Office of Public Health can issue authorizations for the limited medical use of otherwise prohibited substances. To be eligible, patients suffer from a mostly incurable disease, the prohibited substance can alleviate the suffering, and there are no alternative treatments, or such treatments have already extensively been used with insufficient outcome. The current program started in 2014 with two physicians. In 2024, there were approximately 100 physicians who held authorizations to treat 723 patients with MDMA (245 patients), lysergic acid diethylamide (130 patients), or psilocybin (348 patients). There were approximately 1660 psychedelic/MDMA-assisted treatments in 2024, with patients typically being treated 2–4 times with the respective substance within 12 months. Various aspects of the program, including its history, provider characteristics and setting, legal requirements, treatment cost, the role of professional societies, education and continuous formation, personal experience, patient characteristics, outcome, and adverse effects, are described and discussed relative to other recently established programs in Canada and Australia. Such information could be of interest to psychedelic-assisted therapy stakeholders, including professionals, patients, and regulatory bodies that are considering setting up similar restricted access programs.”
Authors: Matthias E. Liechti, Peter Gasser, Helena D. Aicher, Felix Mueller, Tadeusz Hawrot & Yasmin Schmid
Summary of Implementing psychedelic-assisted therapy
Liechti and colleagues set the scene by outlining why classic psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD) and the empathogen MDMA are under clinical investigation for psychiatric and related conditions. The authors note that psilocybin, LSD and MDMA are currently in Phase III programmes for major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, respectively, with the earliest market authorisations possibly arriving in 2028 in the United States and a less certain outlook in Europe.
In the interim, countries have turned to special access mechanisms so that patients with severe, refractory illness can legally receive these substances when conventional care has failed. Switzerland’s “limited medical use” framework is one such pathway, and the article positions it alongside initiatives in Canada and Australia before detailing its evolution and present-day characteristics.
Special access programmes
Find this paper
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nsa.2025.105525
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Cite this paper (APA)
Liechti, M. E., Gasser, P., Aicher, H. D., Mueller, F., Hawrot, T., & Schmid, Y. (2025). Implementing psychedelic-assisted therapy: History and characteristics of the Swiss limited medical use program. Neuroscience Applied, 105525.
Study details
Compounds studied
LSD
MDMA
Psilocybin