Bipartisan Letter Calls For Including Active Service Members In Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Research

A bipartisan legislative effort led by Rep. Dan Crenshaw aims to urge the participation of active-duty servicemembers in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research with psychedelics.

The letter, directed to an appropriations subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies aims to include language within the 2024 FY appropriations bill to urge the NIH to do so, acknowledging the federal agency as “the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world” and affirming that including servicemembers would expand efforts to understand the potential risks and benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy to this population.

Other signatories include Reps. Luis Correa, Jack Bergman, Donald Davis, Chris Deluzio, Max Miller, Nancy Mace, Morgan Luttrell, Mikie Sherrill, Jimmy Panetta, and Ro Khanna, the effort calls on a recent Phase 3 trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and its outstanding results.

The call to action, dated March 24, was supported by mental health and veterans groups from across the country, including Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS), former congresswoman and chair of Apollo Pact Mimi Walters and founder of the Special Operations Association of America (SOAA) Daniel Elkins. 

The document tackles the fact that the currently available data on MDMA treatment for people with PTSD reveals “a gap in our understanding for how these therapies could function in the active-duty demographic,” since the therapy’s recipients within the mentioned trial had been suffering from the condition for an average of 14 years.

An NIH-funded study found that PTSD had an incidence rate of nearly 13% in the active-duty military population and that the correlation between chronic pain and trauma-related disorders is also ascendent for serving personnel.

This reaffirms the NIH’s interest in this therapy for the treatment of PTSD in active personnel through a collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD) can “ensure” the research is including all potential beneficiaries.

Photo: Benzinga edit with photo by Cburnett on Wikimedia Commons and Octavio Hoyos on Shutterstock.