Veterans were hopeful about MDMA-assisted therapy — but voiced real concerns, and some clear misunderstandings
A 2025 study asked veterans living with PTSD how they feel about MDMA-assisted therapy.
Thirty veterans living with PTSD were asked how they view MDMA-assisted therapy — not by direct survey, but by writing short stories about an imagined veteran weighing the treatment, a method meant to surface more candid views. At least a third raised the shortcomings of existing treatments, curiosity about how the therapy works, hope, and worries about side effects and the risk of addiction. About one in ten held clear misunderstandings about the treatment. The study measured attitudes, not outcomes — it doesn't test whether the therapy works, but it maps what veterans actually think, including where misunderstandings remain.
This qualitative study used a story-completion paradigm — participants (n=30) wrote narratives about an anonymous veteran with PTSD considering MDMA-assisted therapy, a projective method designed to reduce self-report bias, analyzed thematically. At least one third of the sample raised the shortcomings of available treatments, curiosity about the treatment's rationale, hope, and concerns about side effects, subjective effects, and addictive potential; at least 10% expressed clear misunderstandings about the drug or the treatment.
This is an attitudes study, not an efficacy trial: it does not measure whether MDMA-assisted therapy works or is safe, and the narratives describe a hypothetical case rather than participants' own treatment. The sample is small (n=30) and drawn from a single group of veterans, so the themes are not necessarily representative of the wider veteran population. Its value is in mapping the questions, hopes, and misconceptions veterans bring to the treatment — useful for consent and education, not for clinical claims.
These attitudes map onto an active clinical literature: MDMA-assisted therapy has since been tested in multi-site Phase 3 trials in broader PTSD populations (Mitchell et al., 2021), while as of 2026 the FDA has requested further trials and MDMA remains investigational.
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