A Retrospective Study to Determine the Impact of Psychedelic Therapy for Dimensional Measures of Wellness: A Quantitative Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background The World Health Organization (WHO) defines wellness as the optimal state of health of individuals and groups. No study to date has identified the impact of psychedelic medicines on optimizing wellness using a dimensional approach. Using this approach, treatment effects can be measured more broadly using a composite score of participants’ global perceptions of change for pain, function, and mood scores. Given the precedence in previous work for retrospective studies of participants’ self-medicating with these substances, the nature of this study design allows for a safe way to develop further evidence in this area of care, with wellness as the broad indication. Methods 65 civilian or military veterans above the age of 18, self-identifying as having used psychedelic medicines for non-recreational purposes in the last 3 years were recruited. Participants completed the following standardized questionnaires: Patient Global Impression of Change (PGIC) scale, Pain, Enjoyment of Life and General Activity (PEG) scale, Anxiety and Depression scale (ADS), and Disability Index (DI) scale. The analysis focused on reported PGIC outcomes and correlations between subscales. Given the nature of the study, a comparison to the baseline could not be made. Results On average, participants reported improvement in all domains (pain, mental health, function, and overall quality of life), regardless of the medicine. Perceived improvement was highest in mental health and overall quality of life, and lowest in pain. Kendall correlation showed a highly significant association between the perceived changes in all domains. Correlation coefficients were highest between the perceived change in function, quality of life, and mental health. Discussion The use of various psychedelic medicines may be associated with a broad range of changes that could help clarify the mechanism of how they impact wellness in the future. Pain, mental health, function, and overall quality of life accordingly improved after the use of these medicines. Minor differences between the drugs were not found as significant, indicating that the perceived benefits seemed to be specific to the psychedelic class. Numerous limitations exist to this type of study which was relatively small in size, retrospective and anonymous in nature. Conclusion The wellness of individuals or groups is not simply an absence of disease, symptoms, or impairments. Instead, it is an outcome that is shaped by a myriad of personal characteristics, psychophysiology, and choices, expressed throughout one’s lifespan, unfolding in dynamic interaction with a complicated sociocultural and physical environment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".