Paulo Barbosa- Personality Traits, Psychiatric Symptoms, and Quality of Life in Ayahuasca Naive Subjects

The authors assessed 23 subjects immediately before and six months after their ?rst ayahuasca session experienced within the urban Brazilian religious context of Santo Daime and União do Vegetal. The measures applied included: 1) the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised Edition , which is designed to assess minor psychiatric symptoms; 2) the Short Form–36 items Health Survey, a questionnaire designed to measure eight dimensions of general health and well-being (physical functioning, role-physical, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional and mental health); 3) the Temperament and Character Inventory–125 items, which measures four domains of temperament (novelty seeking, reward dependence, harm avoidance and persistence) and character (self-directedness, cooperativeness and self- transcendence). Independent variables were the frequency of ayahuasca use throughout the period and the length of ayahuasca washout after six months. Santo Daime subjects showed a signi?cant reduction of minor psychiatric symptoms, improvement of mental health, and a change in character traits towards decreased harm avoidance behavior (i.e. less anxious and pessimistic and more outgoing and optimistic). The União do Vegetal group showed a signi?cant decrease in physical pain, and temperament change towards less reward-dependent behavior (i.e. less social approval-seeker and more cold and aloof). Changes in reward dependence was positively correlated with the frequency of ayahuasca use and negatively correlated with the length of wash-out period. Presenters will discuss possible mechanisms by which these changes may have occurred and suggest areas for future research. This video is from the Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century, a conference in San Jose, California, April 15-18 2010, organized by MAPS - the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in collaboration with: the Heffter Research Institute, The Council on Spiritual Pract...

Channel: Vimeo Video Length: 24m 13s Date Found: Tue, Oct 19 2010 11:51 AM Category: Home Video Date Produced: Thu, Sep 30 2010 12:48 PM View Count: 0