The Effects of Psilocybin-Facilitated Experience on the Psychology and Effectiveness of Religious Professionals

The current protocol is a pilot study of the effects and possible utility of psilocybin-facilitated experiences for professional religious leaders.

We hypothesize that religious professionals, given their interests, training, and life experience, will be able to make nuanced discriminations of their psilocybin experiences, thus contributing to the scientific understanding of mystical-type experience. As we better characterize the phenomenology of psilocybin-induced mystical experiences, we may apply this knowledge to improve potential treatment studies in the future.

A primary objective is to investigate changes in psychological functioning, spirituality, health, well-being, prosocial attitudes and behavior in professional religious leaders that may occur after receiving psilocybin under supportive conditions. A secondary objective is to determine whether participants who report having had the strongest mystical-type effects during psilocybin sessions will show the largest positive changes in the Interim Questionnaire.

Trial Details

This randomized-controlled pilot study uses a wait-list control design. A wait-list design includes a control group that is assigned to a waiting list to receive an intervention after the active treatment group does. In this study, the active group will receive the psilocybin at weeks 5 and 9 and the wait-list control group will receive psilocybin at weeks 30 and 34. The wait-list control group serves the purpose of providing an untreated comparison for the active treatment group, while at the same time allowing the wait-list participants an opportunity to obtain the intervention at a later date. This study's procedures include screening, preparatory meetings, psilocybin sessions, and follow-up assessments. A large battery of behavioral and psychological measures will be assessed throughout. The study team will consent and enroll up to 86 subjects to obtain a total of 12 completer participants as well as 2-3 family members or friends per study participant who can assess said completers on the Observer Rating Form (COM-R). This number will account for screen-failures and dropouts as well. The 12 participants will be randomly assigned to either an immediate participation group (N=6) or a 6-month delayed participation group (N=6). Although statistical power calculations show that 12 participants will be sufficient to detect the major effects anticipated in this study, the sponsor of this study (The Council on Spiritual Practices) is concurrently funding Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to conduct a methodologically identical study with 12 additional participants (IND #59009). This will permit the two sites to collaborate post study completion and combine the data from the two studies to provide statistical power to detect even more subtle effects of the psilocybin intervention. Twelve volunteers (6 from each group) will participate at Johns Hopkins and 12 at New York University. Randomization and data analysis will be conducted at New York University.

NCT Number NCT02421263

Data attribution

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