ArticleScientific reports2026
Media hype regarding psychedelic treatments for depression and PTSD from 2017 to 2024.
Article in Scientific reports, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Enthusiastic media coverage of psychedelics as a treatment for mental health disorders is perceived as hyped compared to coverage of established treatments. To measure potential hype, we conducted pre-registered analyses comparing media coverage (e.g., newspaper articles) of psychedelics to FDA-approved antidepressants for major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. We used LexisNexis to access publications from 2017 to 2024 and natural language processing to analyze 6,805 publications' sentiment and content. Binary logistic regressions compared the language in paragraphs related to psychedelics, antidepressants, both, or neither. As expected, in binomial regressions, positive emotion and sentiment were more strongly associated with media coverage of psychedelics than antidepressants (β = 0.21; β = 0.67, both p < .001), and negative emotion and risk language were more strongly associated with antidepressants than psychedelics (β = 0.25; β = 0.23, both p < .001). Contrary to expectations, reward language was more strongly related to antidepressants (β = 0.19, p < .001), and negative sentiment was more strongly related to psychedelics (β = 0.17, p < .001). Overall, results suggest that media coverage emphasizes the purported benefits of psychedelics and drawbacks of established medications, which may impact patient expectations, adherence with treatment, and patient outcomes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.