Eduardo Schenberg, Christine Hauskeller, Claudia Gertraud Schwarz, and Franklin King IV, Nature Mental Health
When critically examining the assertion that biomedical treatments work for the ‘right’ reasons compared with alternative approaches, philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers1 coined the phrase ‘healing for the wrong reasons’. Here, we discuss the cognitive dissonances and regulatory misalignments apparent in the vote against MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee and the subsequent rejection of this new treatment by the FDA, and ways to realign this decision within a broader socio-cognitive context to ensure psychedelic therapies can benefit patients.