German Government Funds Psilocybin Study for Depression

To my great pleasure, I received the notification last Monday that the reviewers in a lengthy, two-stage assessment process recommended our study “Efficacy and Safety of Psilocybin in Treatment-Resistant Major Depression” to the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for funding.

The last step, the formal application for the funds, is a formal act. Apart from the fact that it is a great success for every scientist to raise more than two million euros in funding, this is a great success for research with psychedelics in Germany. There has never been such a project in Germany before, and this is a large project at the highest scientific level, with which we want to catch up with the top psychedelics researchers in Switzerland, the USA and Great Britain. It is a study that we will conduct at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim together with our friends from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Charité Campus Berlin Mitte and the MIND Foundation. However, it will still take a few more months before the start of the study because we have not yet completely overcome the high regulatory hurdles. But we are working on it with the utmost intensity and we are sure that we will resolve the last issues. Here I would particularly like to thank my young colleague, PhD student and psychologist Lea Mertens, for the great collaboration.

The study is just one component of many of the activities that we undertook in Germany last year. The leadership team of the MIND Foundation, Henrik Jungaberle and his wife Andrea, together with their group of highly motivated young people in Berlin, has achieved a great deal that has and will have huge impact. Although we have only known each other for fourteen months, a deep friendship has emerged that will make a difference in the future and make the world a little bit better. You will certainly hear from us.