IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

For years, scientists have been looking ever more seriously at the therapeutic effect of psychedelics, which are not legal under US federal law. However, despite this renewed interest, large-scale studies are still lacking.

On Wednesday, researchers took an important step to fill this gap.

Their work, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the largest clinical trial ever conducted to evaluate the effect of psilocybin, a psychoactive substance found naturally in  "magic" mushrooms.

A single dose of 25 milligrams reduced symptoms of depression in people for whom several conventional treatments had failed, they showed.

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