Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy Increases Self-Compassion in Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial (NCT02061293) found that psilocybin-assisted therapy significantly improved drinking outcomes compared to an active placebo in adults with alcohol use disorder (AUD). In this secondary analysis, we assessed whether psilocybin-assisted therapy improved self-compassion and whether these changes predicted drinking outcomes. Of the 95 participants enrolled, 86 had self-compassion and drinking outcome data. Forty-four participants were randomized to 2 medication sessions with psilocybin and forty-two to active-placebo control (diphenhydramine); all participants received 12 sessions of manualized psychotherapy. Psilocybin-assisted therapy robustly increased compassionate self-responding (CS) and decreased uncompassionate self-responding (UCS), with the largest effect sizes observed in reducing UCS components (Self-Judgment, Isolation, Over-Identification). Across the full sample, small but significant correlations emerged between improvements in self-compassion and reductions in drinking. However, group-specific analyses revealed that participants in the control group exhibited moderate associations between gains in self-compassion and decreased drinking, whereas no significant association was observed in the psilocybin group. In both groups, these associations were stronger among participants who maintained moderate-to-high-risk drinking during the first four weeks of therapy prior to medication administration. Although the control group consistently exhibited significant correlations and the psilocybin group did not, the between-group differences in correlation strength were not statistically significant. These findings underscore the clinical relevance of self-compassion in AUD treatment but suggest that self-compassion may not mediate outcomes when psilocybin is administered as part of therapy. Larger studies with additional mechanistic analyses are needed to further clarify how self-compassion interacts with psychological processes and pharmacological interventions in shaping treatment response, ultimately informing improvements to psilocybin-assisted therapy for AUD.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".