杏吧原创

The way you speak may reveal whether a psychedelic drug could help聽treat depression or anxiety.

Robin Carhart-Harris and his team at Imperial College London have been testing psilocybin 鈥� a hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms聽鈥� in people with treatment-resistant depression. Their pilot study found that when it聽was given to 12 volunteers alongside psychological support, five of them no longer met the clinical criteria for a depression diagnosis three months later.

But how can you tell if psilocybin might help someone? Working with the Imperial team, Facundo Carrillo at聽the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and his colleagues tested the idea that speech patterns give a clue.

Speech analysis has already been used to identify people with a聽range of mental health disorders, including depression and schizophrenia. 鈥淟anguage is a window to the mind,鈥� says at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a huge part of how people express themselves.鈥�

Positive words

Carrillo鈥檚 team developed software to analyse interview responses given by聽17 people with treatment-resistant depression before psilocybin treatment, and 18 people without depression.

The psilocybin treatment seemed to reduce the symptoms of seven of the people with depression by more than 50聽per cent. Using the results to train their software, the researchers say it can predict whether a person with depression will respond to psilocybin with 85 per cent accuracy

They found that people with depression use significantly fewer positive words than those without the聽condition. Those with depression who are likely to respond to treatment use fewer positive words than those who aren鈥檛.

This is a promising way to screen people, says at Palo Alto University in California. 鈥淚t is a very intense treatment, so being able to screen for people who we think are the best matches would be聽a聽real asset.鈥�

Helpful predictions

She stresses that the tool, if shown to work in larger groups, should be used to aid doctors rather than replace them.

While 85 per cent prediction power is far from ideal, it鈥檚 better than what we have for existing treatments for depression, says Johnson. 鈥淣early every treatment in psychiatry will work for some people but not others,鈥� he says. 鈥淎ny level of prediction is helpful.鈥�

Psilocybin is still a way off being rolled out for clinical use 鈥� only a handful of studies have been conducted so far, and larger trials are needed to confirm that it is safe and effective.

But Johnson is optimistic that psilocybin could be useful for some people with depression. 鈥淚t鈥檚 unprecedented to be able to give a single dose of medication and to have a large decrease in depressive symptoms months later,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not ready for prime time, but the results so far are very promising.鈥�

[video_player id=鈥漚zDxE5hN鈥� access_level=鈥漵ubscriber鈥漖

Read more: Mind menders: how psychedelic drugs rebuild broken brains