John SchroyerIn another nod to the growing global interest in the potential of psychedelic-based medicines, Swedish nonprofit the Norssken Foundation announced this week that it’s launched a new initiative to deliver €3 million in capital to various psychedelic medical studies in the Scandinavian country.
The initiative, called Norrsken Mind: Psychedelic Science Initiative, has already awarded €587,000 in grant money to studies at Karolinska Institutet for a psilocybin therapy study and another at Umeå University for an MDMA therapy study, according to Tech.eu and the Norrsken website.
Both programs are aimed at treating mental health issues, with the psilocybin study targeting major depressive disorder and the MDMA study focused on depression in young adults.
“There is an ever-growing awareness of the importance of investing in mental health,” Norrsken Mind Managing Director Emma Christersson told Tech.eu.
“While there are several important mental health treatments today, they are in many cases insufficient, and we need to explore new ways forward,” Christersson said. “Research on psychedelic-assisted treatments is one of the most promising lines of research in the field of psychiatry right now. There are plenty of interested researchers in Sweden and across Europe. With the right funding and conditions in place, we can help them investigate more effective treatment options through rigorous research.”
The nonprofit also said the €3 million – about $3.2 million in U.S. dollars – is only the beginning, and it plans to raise and deploy even more capital into psychedelics research outside of Sweden in the near future.
