Jamila Hokanson, MD, MBA, MHA is a psychiatrist and researcher based at Yale University who leads and contributes to clinical trials on psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, with a background in integrative psychiatry, quality improvement, and care for adolescents, young adults, women, and people of color. We discussed with her how OCD is defined and what its impact is on mental health, why existing treatments are often not enough, and how psychedelics could help patients break free from persistent symptoms.

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The questions:

00:00 Intro 00:05 Jamila, can you talk about your personal background? 03:04 So psychedelic field is often criticized for being a white, middle class, elitist thing. Do you agree? 03:53 OCD, which is an acronym for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is often used in colloquial language. We say that I have OCD on this and that. So what is the scientific definition of OCD? 05:47 What are the mental health consequences of of having OCD? 07:23 Do we have any idea what causes OCD? 08:52 If we have other forms of treatments for OCD, why do we need psychedelics? 09:45 Do you have any theory about how psychedelics treat OCD? 11:20 What do we know about the effectiveness of psychedelics in treating OCD? 12:37 Can you share any other interesting insights you learned at this study? 14:§5 What kind of psychedelic drug did you use in the trial? How did the sessions look like?

Reporter: Péter Sárosi
Video: István Gábor Takács

Filmed at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR) 2024 in Haarlem, The Netherlands.