Trends in the psychedelic renaissance: applying artificial intelligence to measure media portrayal of psychedelic drugs in the 21st century
David A. Bender, Holly Dunn, Amanda Pekau, Arushi D. Mohite, Akila Anandarajah, Brendan Ross, Jacob T. Steinle, Suraj Shankar, Brandon J. Kiley, Sara Martin, Rishi Gonuguntla, Mia Stonov, Nithya Pippala, Rana Abdalla, Madison K. Stille, Juy Yusuf, Madeline Villalba, Gibson Werner, Anvi Divekar, Melinda Daniels-tineo, Hannah Wang, Sophia Chertock, Sonali Sharma, Syed Ali Ahmed, Reetwan Bandyopadhyay, Jatin Sridhar, M.k. Iyer, Adebusola Adeyemi, Kayla Smart, Umer Jalil, Zaryab Alam, Barış Erçal, David J. Hellerstein, Charles B. Nemeroff
BJPsych Open February 12, 2026 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1192/bjo.2025.10974 via OpenAlex
Summary
From 2000 to 2025, media articles about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics increased significantly, from 13.3% to 85.3%. The average sentiment score for these articles was 78.5, with only 1.3% displaying negative sentiment. However, negative and neutral coverage has risen since 2020, peaking at 20.9% in 2024. Despite a generally positive portrayal, the increasing negative sentiment suggests a complex relationship between media and scientific research on psychedelics.
Study at a glance
| Sample size | 2,168 |
|---|---|
| Population | media articles related to psychedelics from Google News |
| Key finding | The proportion of articles focusing on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics increased from 13.3% in 2000-2009 to 85.3% in 2020-2025. |
Abstract
Background The relationship between media portrayal of psychedelic drugs, scientific research and drug policy is an area of debate. Aims To apply artificial intelligence technology to measure trends in media sentiment towards the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs. Method Up to 300 of the most relevant articles from Google News searches for the term ‘psychedelics’ were sampled for each year from 2000 to 2025. A large language model, ChatGPT, evaluated subject matter and sentiment. Results In total, 88.3% of screened URLs (3308 of 3747) were included in the analysis. The proportion of articles focusing on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics increased from 13.3% (26 of 198) from 2000 to 2009 to 85.3% (1254 of 1470) from 2020 to 2025. The average sentiment score from 2000 to 2025 for articles from all publications ( N = 2168) was 78.5 ± 9.3 (mean ± s.d.) (possible range: 1–100). 1.3% (29 of 2168) of articles carried negative sentiment (<50) whereas 4.8% (103 of 2168) had extremely positive sentiment (≥90). Average sentiment reached a peak in 2020 (80.8 ± 7.0), and a statistically significant trough in sentiment was observed in 2024 relative to 2020–2023 (2020–2023, 79.2; 2024, 74.3, P < 0.00001, Mann–Whitney U -test). The proportion of negative-neutral articles (≤65) increased annually from a trough of 3.6% (8 of 267) in 2020 to a peak of 20.9% (43 of 253) in 2024. Artificial intelligence sentiment scores were correlated and concordant with average human rater scores ( r = 0.88, concordance correlation coefficient 0.84). Conclusions Although most 21st-century media coverage of psychedelic drugs has been positively framed, negative and neutral coverage has increased in frequency since 2020. Researchers, clinicians, regulators and policy-makers should be mindful of the complex relationship between media portrayals of psychedelics and the results of scientific research.