Part 1: Treating mental illness with psychedelics - A Different Lens

When we think ‘psychedelics’, we tend to think of illegal, mind-altering substances. But the research suggests they’ve been getting a bad rap for decades. In the fight for better mental health services, support and outcomes for millions of people across the globe, the data can no longer be ignored: psychedelics might just be the key to unlocking a revolution in mental health.
A number of independent and collaborating groups at Monash are working on psychedelic research. The Clinical Psychedelic Research Lab, led by Dr Paul Liknaitzky, is spearheading research into the clinical applications of several different psychedelic-assisted treatments for mental health conditions. The Computational and Systems Neuroscience Lab, led by Associate Professor Adeel Razi, is exploring questions of basic science and brain imaging in healthy volunteers. And the Anorexia and Feeding Disorders Group, led by Dr Claire Foldi, is investigating animal models of psilocybin treatment.
There is also the newly established Neuromedics Discovery Centre (NDC), an end-to-end cross-disciplinary Centre to drive novel psychiatric drug discovery, as well as new approaches to neuromedicine-assisted psychotherapies, for the treatment of mental health disorders.
The NDC, led by Monash’s Professor Arthur Christopoulos, will bring together the combined expertise and resources of world-leading researchers and collaborators to propel new treatment for mental ill-health spanning the entire medicines development pipeline, from drug discovery and optimisation to clinical trial, new healthcare guidelines and into the public policy arena.
Across the Monash expertise, the focus is finding better treatments for common psychiatric illnesses, changing how we treat mental health issues, delivering better outcomes and saving lives.