Psychedelic therapy is unlikely to ever become mainstream treatment for serious mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. In those cases, it’s significantly more likely to cause more problems than it solves. In general these new faddish psychedelic treatments are mostly effective for bougie mental illness – mild depression, anxiety, stress – but they do not belong in a treatment regimen for serious illness. There is a reason every psychedelic treatment study excludes participants with schizophrenia and bipolar.

ECT might seem barbaric and unsexy compared to dosing some psilocybin and listening to some ambient music in a cozy room, but that doesn’t reduce its clinical value for people with serious, treatment resistant disorders.