Psilocybin-assisted therapy for demoralisation in hospice patients: feasibility, safety and preliminary efficacy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To assess the feasibility, safety and preliminary efficacy of psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) for demoralisation in terminally ill patients receiving home hospice care. METHODS: In this open-label pilot trial, 4607 home hospice patients at a large community hospice were screened over 22 months; 66 were approached, 15 enrolled and 10 received psilocybin. Participants completed two home-based preparation sessions, a single 25 mg oral psilocybin session at an inpatient hospice facility, and two home-based integration sessions. Feasibility was assessed through recruitment, retention and acceptability. Safety was evaluated via adverse event monitoring, and preliminary efficacy was assessed using changes in demoralisation scores and other psychosocial measures. RESULTS: The intervention was well tolerated, with no serious adverse events attributed to psilocybin. At week 3, demoralisation scores significantly decreased (mean reduction: 8.8 points, p=0.0196), despite ongoing clinical decline. Grief- and peace-related themes were prominent during psilocybin sessions. While six participants rated the treatment favourably on the Reaction to Research Participation Questionnaire global evaluation factor, three rated neutral on one or more items, suggesting that the emotional intensity and demands of the intervention may influence acceptability. CONCLUSION: This study provides initial evidence that PAT can be feasibly and safely integrated into hospice care for terminally ill patients. Further research is needed to optimise delivery and further assess therapeutic potential.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| 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) | 0.003 | 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".