Classic Psychedelic Use and Mechanisms of Mental Health: Exploring the Mediating Roles of Spirituality and Emotion Processing on Symptoms of Anxiety, Depressed Mood, and Disordered Eating in a Community Sample

Introduction

Classic psychedelics are serotonin (5-HT2A) agonists such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT (including ayahuasca). These substances produce altered perception, feelings of interconnectedness and affective introspection and have long histories of plant‑based spiritual and healing use. Recent epidemiological, qualitative, laboratory and clinical work has reopened scientific interest in their therapeutic potential, with studies reporting lower rates of psychological dysfunction among users and randomised or open‑label trials showing anxiolytic and antidepressant effects in populations such as terminally ill patients and those with treatment‑resistant depression. Despite these promising findings, the mechanisms linking psychedelic use to improved mental health remain poorly understood. Lafrance and colleagues set out to test one proposed pathway by which psychedelic use might relate to better mental health: that greater psychedelic use is associated with higher self‑reported spirituality, which in turn predicts improved emotion regulation capacity, and that improved emotion regulation then predicts lower symptoms of anxiety, depressed mood and disordered eating. The study examined these relationships in a community sample of lifetime psychedelic users and additionally considered frequency of use (as a proxy for dose) as an individual‑difference variable that might influence outcomes.