Psychedelics Transdiagnostic Therapeutics

01/06/2026

Neuropsychiatry / behavioral neurology is the study of emotional and behavioral disorders in which disturbed brain functions are either scientifically established or strongly suggested. Prior to the 80s, the term neuropsychiatry was limited to conditions with identified etiologies, i.e., the depression or mania following a stroke, delirium/dementia associated with hepatic encephalopathy, or the paranoid/religious psychosis of a temporal lobe epileptic?

However, with the rapid advances in the neurosciences, the more serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and autism are undeniably recognized as brain disorders. Considerable skepticism is raised in the courts when brain disorders are used to explain away horrific acts or serious antisocial behaviors. Mental health professionals may identify brain damage as a causal mechanism in wrongful behavior without an adequate scientific basis. This may be the result of honest differences in opinion, advocacy, or in some instances (unfortunately) the willingness to provide a desired opinion for the referring party.

👉 Read more on this week's blog:

Neuropsychiatry / behavioral neurology is the study of emotional and behavioral disorders in which disturbed brain functions are either scientifically

12/31/2025

As a Harvard-trained physician, with a background in brain injury medicine, pain medicine, addiction medicine and psychiatry, I’ve spent the last 15 years focused on what I believe are the four dark horsemen afflicting humanity:

🧠 Brain injuries
⚡ Chronic pain
🧠 Severe psychological trauma & PTSD
🔗 Addiction

These conditions represent one of the greatest threats to human well-being today. They fuel chronic suffering, disability, incarceration, and homelessness, impacting millions of Americans, both veterans and civilians.

For over a decade, I’ve worked with ketamine-assisted treatment, which has led me to explore the broader potential of psychedelics as transdiagnostic therapeutic agents - tools that may help address the root causes shared across these complex conditions.

It’s time for deeper conversations, rigorous science, and compassionate care models that meet the scale of the problem.

🧠 www.mohannairmd.com

12/23/2025

If you’re curious about the growing role of psychedelics in healthcare, Psychedelic Capitalism by Jamie Brownlee and Kevin Walby, published by Columbia University Press, is a strong place to begin.

🔗 Watch the full discussion on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u9LpIAC7p8&t=6s

12/19/2025

Psychedelic Capitalism from Columbia University Press provides a critical analysis of the exploding medical psychedelic terrain. Authors Brownlee and Walby illuminate where the corporate-capture trip is headed—through hasty medicalization, commercialization, psychedelic tourism, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and aggressive intellectual-property practices. It gives insight into the handshake politics of Big Pharma, government regulatory bodies, and politics that infest the U.S. healthcare “industry.”

👉 Learn more about Psychedelic Capitalism here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/psychedelic-capitalism/9781773637310/

As I have noted in my book Making Sense of Suffering – Psychedelic Medicine for Pain Management, a soulless health care “industry” dedicated solely to profiteering and not to people sucks up billions of dollars in private profits from public money, while 80 million Americans go with no health care or substandard health care in the most expensively budgeted health care system in the world.

📖 Making Sense of Suffering – Psychedelic Medicine for Pain Management - Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C8KZPK64

Drawing from the collective wisdom and diverse backgrounds of individuals passionate about psychedelics as medicine, the reader is provided cutting-edge up to date research data. This includes the basic science of psychedelics as it may apply to pain related conditions. Specific information is...

12/12/2025

A powerful dive into how Terence McKenna’s first brush with DMT at 19 shattered everything he thought he knew — and turned him into a psychedelic “edge runner.” In this new piece, we follow how that single trip rewired his worldview and set him on a lifelong quest to transform a molecule into a cultural sacrament.

👉 Curious where “the secret the world can’t tell” leads? Read more:

After a mind-bending trip at nineteen, Terence McKenna, or “America’s shaman,” spent his adult life transforming a molecule into a cultural sacrament.

12/11/2025

Time to legalize psychedelics? A compelling campus debate is unpacking one of today’s most provocative questions: should we fast-track psychedelic access for its potential therapeutic benefits — especially for issues like veteran su***de — or slow down to make sure safety and rigorous science come first? Experts from law, medicine, ethics, and lived experience weigh in on both sides of the issue.

What is missing in the discussion are the elephants in the room. There is growing evidence that existing psychedelics may have transdiagnostic therapeutic applications, providing a novel strategy to help countless Americans who suffer from intractable depression, PTSD, chronic pain, and addictions. There is some evidence that psychedelics may help with neurological conditions such as stroke, parkinsons, and dementia. Shouldn't this public health issue be driving the creation of a Manhattan Project style government NIH sponsored program to study psychedelics? Should it be left to big pharma (or small pharma with big pharma dreams) for whom legalization of existing psychedelics would not be profitable and their hopes are for a “safer and better" (or maybe not) psychedelics that can be provided at huge costs? If Johnson & Johnson’s genius in taking a 70-year-old drug, ketamine, that costs pennies and market Spravto for $1,000 a pop is any clue, we have a sense of where this could all be going.

🔗 Dive into the full discussion: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/12/time-to-legalize-psychedelics/

👇 Comment and share your thoughts below

Campus debate weighs therapeutic need vs. safety questions

12/11/2025

DMT, a potent psychedelic that exists in our body may help prevent strokes.

👉 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx5958

Marcell J. László, Judit P. Vigh, Anna E. Kocsis, Gergő Porkoláb, Zsófia Hoyk, Tamás Polgár, Fruzsina R. Walter, Attila Szabó, Srdjan Djurovic, Béla Merkely, Alán Alpár, Ede Frecska, Zoltán Nagy, Mária A. Deli, Sándor Nardai. N , N -dimethyltryptamine mitigates experimental stroke by stabilizing the blood-brain barrier and reducing neuroinflammation. Science Advances, 2025; 11 (33) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx5958

The protective effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine on the blood-brain barrier and microglia can be helpful in stroke therapy.

11/13/2025

Remembering Dr. Nolan Williams, a pioneering Stanford neurologist and psychiatrist. He developed groundbreaking treatments using psychedelics and TMS for severe depression. The New York Times reported his passing, noting he fought the same battles he helped others overcome. A powerful reminder of the hidden struggles many face.

🔗 Read the article here: https://nyti.ms/43ukurr

10/28/2025

The death by su***de by Nolan Williams is deeply tragic — a brilliant researcher who devoted his life to advancing our understanding of depression, su***de and addictions through psychedelics and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

His passing reminds us of a painful truth: knowing -including scientific knowledge does not make us immune from the weight of emotion. Feelings — despair, rage, fear — are powerful forces that can sometimes override reason and understanding.

But feelings are not permanent and mostly - to quote Victor Hugo: “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

https://maps.org/2025/10/14/remembering-nolan-williams/

08/23/2025

An interesting read.. “Although healthcare expenditure per capita is higher for the United States than any other country, over 37 million Americans are entirely without health insurance and 41 million more have inadequate access to care.”

“The salary for the head of this single-payer system would be capped at the $210,700 salary of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This cap would eliminate the excessive compensation of health insurance company executives, some of whom earn over $20 million annual”

🔗 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8572548/

Galvani AP, Parpia AS, Foster EM, Singer BH, Fitzpatrick MC. Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA. Lancet. 2020 Feb 15;395(10223):524-533. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)33019-3. PMID: 32061298; PMCID: PMC8572548.

Although healthcare expenditure per capita is higher for the United States than any other country, over 37 million Americans are entirely without health insurance and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Whereas ongoing efforts to repeal ...

08/22/2025

Between 1985 and 1992, I conducted several hundred SPECT scans on psychiatric patients, both adults and adolescents. What I found was striking: every single scan was abnormal.

This raises important questions.

Could it be that every child and adult I saw truly had an abnormal brain?

Or might there have been something else at play?

The debate continues: are SPECT scans a legitimate tool in understanding ADHD and mental illness, or are they closer to “snake oil”?

I’ll let you be the judge.

🔗 https://apple.news/ALevRRiBKRs2KBMoYAuo9XQ

04/12/2025

The risk of developing dementia over nine years was 27% higher among socially isolated older adults compared with older adults who were not socially isolated.

It is estimated that 40% of dementia cases could be prevented by modification of lifestyle factors that associate with disease risk. One of these potentially modifiable lifestyle factors is social isolation. In this review, we discuss what is known about associations between social isolation and Alz...