The Mental Health Pandemic Soars Into Focus, Psychedelics In The Spotlight

• The Mental Health Pandemic is (by far) the largest global medical crisis today
• As COVID hysteria fades, the Mental Health Pandemic is finally coming into focus
• Psychedelic drugs represent “miracle” therapies to address this pandemic

There are two pandemics in the world today. After an obsessive media focus on the smaller pandemic, the larger pandemic is now moving into the public spotlight.

At the beginning of 2020, the COVOD-19 pandemic began. After roughly 18 months, a little over 2% of the global population has contracted COVID-19 (with 90% of those infected already cured). In fact, this novel coronavirus barely qualifies as a pandemic.

The forgotten Pandemic

Meanwhile, before the world had ever heard of “COVID-19”, a larger pandemic was already raging: the Mental Health Crisis. Accounting for just stress-related mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, addiction and PTSD, over 1 billion people (roughly 1 in 6 people) were affected by the Mental Health Crisis prior to the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 5 times the total number of people who have contracted COVID-19.

However, the unprecedented mental suffering induced from COVID-19 lockdowns has caused these stress-related mental health disorders to explode. Psychedelic Stock Watch has already covered this rapidly worsening medical crisis.
 

• Overall, the percentage of Americans suffering from depression had already more-than-tripled by September 2020, from 8.5% to 27.8% (91.75 million Americans) [source: Boston University]
• Rates of “moderately severe depression” among Americans have quadrupled (from 2% to 8%) and rates of “severe depression” have more than quintupled (from less than 1% to 5%) [source: WebMD]
• The depression/anxiety pandemic continues to worsen: between August 2020 and January 2021, the percentage of Americans experiencing anxiety or depression jumped from 36% to 42% [source: CDC]

• As of August 2020, sales of alcohol in the U.S. had risen by 27%, along with a 32% increase in non-prescribed fentanyl, 20% increase in methamphetamines, 12.5% increase in heroin, and 10% increase in cocaine, leading to an 18% increase in drug overdoses [source: EHS Today]

In the United States, depression alone has more than tripled, with over ¼ of the U.S. population suffering from depression. Anxiety and substance abuse disorders are also exploding higher.

We don’t have global numbers on how much the Mental Health Pandemic has worsened, but a ballpark estimate is that mental health disorders have increased by at least 50%. That would mean roughly 1 in 4 people – worldwide – with one or more mental health disorders.

And finally the COVID-obsessed media is starting to pay attention. This new article from the Wall Street Journal summarizes this worsening medical catastrophe.

Americans Seek Urgent Mental-Health Support as Covid-19 Crisis Ebbs

In the coronavirus pandemic, a wave of mental-health crises has grown into a tsunami, flooding an already taxed system of care. As the country appears to be emerging from the worst of the Covid-19 crisis, emergency departments say they are overwhelmed by patients who deferred or couldn’t access outpatient treatment, or whose symptoms intensified or went undiagnosed during the lockdowns. [emphasis mine]

Mental health was a “crisis” in the United States (and much of the world) long before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. An ignored crisis.

Part of the reason why COVID-19 has received grossly disproportionate coverage from the mainstream media relative to mental health issues is due to ignorance: the erroneous belief that mental health disorders aren’t as deadly as the COVID-19 flu virus.

Wrong.

Every year in the U.S., roughly 500,000 nicotine addicts are killed from cigarette smoking.

Another 50,000 Americans are now being killed each year from opioid overdoses.

Twenty-two U.S. veterans commit suicide every day.

And those are just a few of the ways that mental health disorders kill.

The media has ignored this much larger pandemic. Our governments have ignored this much larger pandemic.

But that’s only half the explanation on how a “crisis” has morphed into a pandemic. More importantly, our healthcare system has failed to provide even adequate care for these mental health disorders.

Psychedelic Stock Watch has previously detailed the appalling failure rates in treating depression, substance abuse and PTSD. A medical crisis has become a pandemic, while our healthcare system lacks effective therapies to even stabilize this pandemic – let alone reverse it.

Enter psychedelic drugs.

Psychedelics: “miracle drugs” to address the Mental Health Pandemic

While major media outlets (like the Wall Street Journal) are finally noticing the Mental Health Pandemic, Psychedelic Stock Watch has been banging the drum for months with respect to the solution: psychedelic drug-based therapies.

Spectacular results in clinical testing. Potentially enormous improvements versus the existing standard of care. Staggering numbers of people in desperate need of treatment.

For all these reasons, Psychedelic Stock Watch has had no reservation in labeling psychedelic drugs the Miracle Drugs of the 21st century.

Miracle Drugs that are (mostly) illegal, thanks to five decades of “War on Drugs” stupidity. The failure of the War on Drugs is now being universally acknowledged. But we are only beginning to suffer the consequences of that stupidity.

Psychedelics-based therapies for mental health disorders could have been fully developed and deployed over the 50 years that governments have (foolishly) criminally prohibited these substances – and banned even medical research.

However, the “global renaissance of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of mental health” is now gaining momentum.
 
Here in North America, there is movement in Canada federally toward the legalization of psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms”). In the United States, regulatory reform is only at the state level. But California is currently voting on a bill to legalize possession of several psychedelic drugs.

As usual, the science is ahead of both the media and our governments. The media is finally waking up.
 
Coverage of the potential of psychedelic drugs has exploded over the past two months. Now (it appears) the media is “discovering” the Mental Health Pandemic. The politicians, who are slavish followers of the mainstream media, can be expected to get their own wake-up call.

Political wake-up call

The Mental Health Pandemic – a much larger pandemic than COVID-19 – demands as urgent and immediate a response as COVID-19 from the political leaders of the United States and other nations.

Politicians don’t have the luxury of engaging in their usual dithering and stumbling when it comes to any sort of progressive change. Legalization of psychedelic drugs for medicinal use needed to be done yesterday.

The mainstream media is now singing the virtues of psychedelic medicine. These large media corporations have also (finally) begun to acknowledge the Mental Health Pandemic.

Meanwhile, Compass Pathways (US:CMPS), one of the industry leaders in the emerging psychedelic drugs sector, just announced completion of its Phase IIb study on a psilocybin-based therapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression. Other public companies have also already entered Phase II clinical trials or are preparing to do so.


Psychedelic Stock Watch has previously laid out the commercial potential for psychedelic drug development to investors.
 
To date, this investment potential has been drowned out by the incessant media clamor surrounding COVID-19. The result is that most psychedelic stocks are trading well off of previous highs, despite steady progress in drug R&D and robust corporate treasuries.

Today, the mainstream media is “discovering” the Mental Health Pandemic. Soon, these large corporations will start to connect-the-dots on the profit potential of psychedelic drugs to address the Mental Health Pandemic.

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