Former South Australian Democrats MP Sandra Kanck was pilloried for suggesting in 2006 that people traumatised by devastating bushfires at Wangary on Eyre Peninsula could be treated with the illegal drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

More than a decade later, drugs in that class are gaining traction as potential psychiatric treatments.

Dr Nigel Strauss, a Victorian psychiatrist with a special interest in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) treatment, said research on treating depression with MDMA was well advanced in the United States.

"The fact that they've been allowed to go ahead with what they call 'phase three' studies indicates that these drugs are basically safe in a research situation," Dr Strauss said.

"They're going to use these drugs for reasonably large numbers of people and if they show positive results … there is a significant chance that eventually these drugs will be used therapeutically."

Dr Chris Letheby from the University of Adelaide's Department of Philosophy has collaborated on the research into medical use of psychedelics.

He said growing evidence suggested they might provide positive transformative experiences in circumstances where conventional medicine had little effect.

"If we're talking about conditions like depression, anxiety and addiction and mood disorders, they seem to be about people getting trapped into a rigid and repetitive and narrow way of thinking," he said.

"It looks like psychedelics can break down those patterns temporarily.

"There's actually then a window of opportunity during and after the experience where they can access alternative and more beneficial ways of interpreting and experiencing the world."

Safeguards needed to guard against misuse

Dr Strauss said psychedelics were also applied differently to medical marijuana, which had no psychoactive effect.

"There is no separation where a certain component of those drugs can be of any use without the psychoactive component — it is actually a psychoactive component of the psychedelics that has hopefully the medicinal effect," he said.

Dr Strauss said MDMA and other psychedelics were still subject to misconceptions about therapeutic potential due to their stigma as illegal recreational drugs.

"There's still a lot of public perception that they are drugs of abuse," he said.

"They are being abused in recreational settings. I'm certainly not a person who supports their decriminalisation and their use recreationally.

"I tried to initiate research in Australia at a well known university a few years ago and was told quite openly that that sort of research is far too controversial and I wouldn't be allowed to do so.

"Particularly in Australia there is a very conservative reaction against it."

He said medical uses for psychedelics also had to be taken seriously by some Australian media that did not understand their potential.

Dr Letheby said there were decades of misunderstanding about psychedelic drugs and the key approach was to let the science speak for itself.