KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The phase 2 trial aimed to investigate the impact of PAT on the existential experiences of patients coping with advanced cancer.
- Researchers gained significant insights into PAT’s therapeutic mechanism and effects by exploring patients with cancer.
Advanced cancer poses an existential threat, raising for patients and caregivers the potential for both multi-dimensional suffering and growth. Despite its high prevalence among those with advanced cancer, existential distress remains insufficiently addressed by modern healthcare systems.
In response to this unmet need, psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) has emerged as a potential tool to address the existential needs of patients coping with advanced cancer. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding how patients articulate this aspect of their cancer journey and how it may be influenced by the mystical experiences induced by PAT, particularly within the context of group therapy.
Elise Tarbi and the team aimed to assess the full breadth of existential experiences described by patients with cancer during group PAT sessions.
They qualitatively analyzed existing data from semi-structured interviews with participants of the psilocybin trial, “The Safety and Efficacy of Psilocybin in Cancer Patients with Major Depressive Disorder” (NCT04593563). Among the 30 trial participants, 28 completed exit interviews. Using a qualitative descriptive approach paired with directed content analysis, an inclusive analysis was performed on interview transcripts, grounded in the Conceptual Model of Existential Experience in Adults with Advanced Cancer.
The analysis revealed 3 overarching themes that shed light on the existential journey of patients with cancer and depression during group PAT. Participants described a deepened lived understanding of their mortality, as well as a reckoning with and a re-prioritization of their attention, relationships, and efforts. Their therapeutic intentions for participating in the PAT trial went beyond relief of depression and extended to gain a new perspective towards existential worries – about death and dying and grief of actual or anticipated losses – and building spiritual resources to work toward desired states.
Lastly, they described the lasting effects of PAT as a healing transformation, noting an enhanced sense of meaning as well as new tools for coping with cancer and death anxiety, revitalized priorities and values, and deepened relationships with self and others.
The study concluded that by exploring the comprehensive descriptions of existential experiences among cancer patients during group Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy (PAT), valuable insights into the therapeutic mechanisms and effects of this emerging treatment modality were gained.
The trial was sponsored by Maryland Oncology Hematology, PA.
Source: https://ons.confex.com/ons/2024/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/14486
Clinical Trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04593563
Tarbi E, Miner S, Nigam K, et al. (2024). “Descriptions of Existential Experience in Patients with Cancer and Major Depression Participating in Psilocybin-Assisted Group Therapy.” Presented at ONS 2024 (Abstract RS77).
