The mushrooming of the psychedelic renaissance: A scoping review identifying trends in ongoing clinical trials
Research Square January 12, 2026 Lucas M Wittenkeller, Gary Gudelsky, T. John Winhusen et al.
A review of 165 ongoing clinical trials using classic psychedelics reveals that most are early-phase, U.S.-based studies for depression. Psychedelics are typically administered once, with designs either open-label single-arm or parallel-assignment quadruple-blinded active-placebo. Only six trials explicitly report blinding effectiveness, and 33 different placebos are used as controls. The review identifies a need for proper placebo selection and improved participant masking to address unanswered questions in the field.