Israeli Group to Study MDMA Therapy for October 7 Survivors With PTSD

A group of 400 Israeli survivors of the October 7 Hamas attack, including civilians, released hostages, and soldiers, could be offered MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a potentially trailblazing study to commence later this year.

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“Our goal is to create a therapy model that can serve universally, with the intention and prayer to help people,” said Dr. Keren Tzarfaty, CEO and co-founder of MAPS Israel, which is already running trials evaluating MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and eating disorders. “We hope it will demonstrate high levels of safety and effectiveness and enable us to offer the program in other places over the region and the world, not only to treat PTSD, but to help people open their hearts and expand their minds.”

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Dr. Rick Doblin, founding president of the U.S.-based MAPS and a longtime advocate for using psychedelic therapy in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, said that the study would serve as a seminal piece of research into whether psychedelic-assisted therapy can help large groups of traumatized people.

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“Hundreds of people took MDMA and LSD at this party and underwent serious trauma; hiding under the bodies of fallen friends, and running away,” he said. “We’re now trying to understand how these people are feeling, how we can help them to hopefully avoid going into PTSD, and how this relates to the substance they took and their experience.”

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The nature of the ongoing war could also pose challenges for the study participants’ healing processes, according to Leor Roseman, a neuroscientist at the University of Exeter who is working with a group of Palestinian and Israeli activists to create a psychedelic peacebuilding program.

“I imagine that it is harder to heal when the wound is still very much open,” Roseman said. MDMA therapy for soldiers, he added, might act as a tonic for moral wounds caused by their own actions, but it could also have a pacifying force and help transform society, “because trauma feeds into violence.”

Previously:

Psychedelic Drugs Are Rushing Towards Approval for Therapy. Here’s What’s Next

Dan Crenshaw’s measure greenlighting psychedelics to treat PTSD part of defense bill + More

FDA Weighs New Application To Approve MDMA As First-Ever Psychedelic Medicine For PTSD + More About MAPS