Age moderates the relationship between psychedelic use and mental health in naturalistic settings

Abstract

Depression and anxiety affect one in five adults and vary across the lifespan; while prevalence generally declines with age until midlife, later life is marked by a re-emergence of symptoms. Although clinical trials suggest classic psychedelics (e.g., psilocybin, LSD) and non-classic psychedelics (e.g., MDMA, ketamine) may alleviate these symptoms, it remains unclear how these relationships function in naturalistic settings or how they vary across the lifespan. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 1,088 adults (18-55+ years) to assess how lifetime psychedelic use – categorized as classic, non-classic, or mixed – relates to mental health. We found that age significantly moderates the relationship between lifetime history of psychedelic use and mental health measures . Specifically, classic psychedelic use was linked to lower depression and anxiety among younger adults, but these effects diminished with age. These associations persisted independently of drug-use parameters , including dosage, frequency, and recency of use. Moderated-mediation analyses indicated that mystical-type experiences accounted for the associations with both depression and anxiety among younger adults, but not among older adults, where a residual association with anxiety remained independent of mystical experience. These findings suggest that age may be a meaningful moderator of mental health outcomes from psychedelic use. This underscores the potential value of age-stratified research to optimize the efficacy and safety of psychedelic-assisted interventions.  

Topics & conditions

Detected automatically by Psychedelic Commons from the title and abstract, not labels from the source. They may be incomplete.

Keywords