Journal of Eating Disorders
May 26, 2025
Julie Trim, Samantha Shao, Nadav Liam Modlin et al.
14 citations
Psychedelic therapy (PT) may be beneficial for treating eating disorders and trauma-related conditions such as PTSD and dissociative amnesia. The abstract reviews how psilocybin could help patients remember and process traumatic memories, suggesting a mechanism for its therapeutic effects.
Journal of Eating Disorders
December 27, 2024
Elena Koning, Cristiano Chaves, Elisa Brietzke et al.
2 citations
Eating disorders affect 1-3% of the population, and standard treatments fail for about one third of cases. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy shows emerging evidence for improving outcomes, but limited knowledge of its neurobiological mechanisms restricts confirmation of clinical utility. This narrative review surveys methodologies—including magnetic resonance imaging, molecular neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and neuroplasticity markers—that could probe the neurobiological correlates of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in eating disorders. It describes implications of these methods for psychedelic study design, challenges, limitations, and future directions, serving as a resource for scientists designing studies to identify effective therapeutic interventions.
Journal of Eating Disorders
December 9, 2025
Elizabeth Wassenaar, Dan V. Blalock, Alan Duffy et al.
1 citation
Adults with eating disorders (EDs) who also have treatment-resistant depression or bipolar disorder improved in depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and ED symptoms regardless of whether they received subanesthetic intranasal ketamine. In a matched comparison of 85 patients who received ketamine and 85 who did not, both groups showed significant improvements from admission to discharge on all outcomes, with no significant differences between groups. Ketamine-treated patients had significantly longer lengths of stay. The findings suggest ketamine may be a viable option for this population, but its efficacy for treating EDs with comorbid depression was not superior to standard care in this study.
Journal of Eating Disorders
December 4, 2025
Samuli Kangaslampi, Max Wolff, Manoj K. Doss et al.
1 citation
Psychedelics like psilocybin can trigger vivid memory-like experiences, but a recent case report claiming that two patients recovered dissociated traumatic memories during psilocybin treatment for anorexia nervosa may not have adequately considered alternative explanations. The cases do not necessarily show that psilocybin induces recovery of dissociated traumatic memories or could treat dissociative amnesia. The authors also caution against explicitly preparing patients for the emergence of forgotten material, as such suggestions warrant scrutiny.
Journal of Eating Disorders
February 17, 2026
Stephanie Knatz Peck, Timothy D. Brewerton
Spontaneously recovered, previously forgotten traumatic memories of sexual assaults emerged in two research participants during psilocybin treatment. The authors defend their classification of these experiences as dissociated traumatic memories against criticisms that they lacked corroborating evidence and failed to consider alternative explanations. They further discuss potential therapeutic effects linked to how such experiences are labeled.