Yet the new research into psychedelics comes along at a time when mental health...

Yet the new research into psychedelics comes along at a time when mental health treatment in this country is so "broken"-to use the word of Tom Insel, who until 2015 was director of the National Institute of Mental Health-that the field's willingness to entertain radical new approaches is perhaps greater than it has been in a generation. The pharmacological toolbox for treating depression-which afflicts nearly a tenth of all Americans and, worldwide, is the leading cause of disability-has little in it today, with antidepressants losing their effectiveness* and the pipeline for new psychiatric drugs drying up. Pharmaceutical companies are no longer investing in the development of so-called CNS drugs-medicines targeted at the central nervous system. The mental health system reaches only a fraction of the people suffering from mental disorders, most of whom are discouraged from seeking treatment by its cost, social stigma, or ineffectiveness. There are almost forty-three thousand suicides every year in America {more than the number of deaths from either breast cancer or auto accidents}, yet only about half of the people who take their lives have ever received mental health treatment. "Broken" does not seem too harsh a characterization of such a system.

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