After a single psilocybin dose, veterans' anxiety, quality of life, and functioning improved — but the gains largely tracked their depression improvement rather than standing on their own.
A 2026 analysis looked at whether a single psilocybin dose helped veterans' anxiety, quality of life, and functioning — beyond its effect on their depression.
This exploratory analysis examined whether a single 25 mg psilocybin dose helped veterans with treatment-resistant depression across anxiety, quality of life, functioning, and PTSD — beyond its effect on depression itself. Anxiety fell 59% by three weeks (sustained to a year), and quality of life and functioning also improved. But once the researchers accounted for how much depression had improved, those other gains were no longer statistically significant — suggesting they moved together with the lift in depression rather than independently. It's a small, open-label study.
This exploratory secondary analysis of an open-label psilocybin trial in veterans with treatment-resistant depression (n=15; 10 completed 12 months) examined anxiety (GAD-7), quality of life (Q-LES-Q-SF), functioning (WSAS), and PTSD (PCL-5) after a single 25 mg dose. GAD-7 fell 59% at Week 3 (sustained to 12 months), Q-LES-Q rose 24% at Week 3, WSAS improved 46% at Week 3. Crucially, these effects were no longer statistically significant after adjusting for concurrent depression improvement.
The depression-adjustment finding is the key nuance: the anxiety, quality-of-life, and functioning gains largely co-varied with depression rather than being independent. As a small (n=15), open-label, uncontrolled secondary analysis it is exploratory; the authors note the small sample and open-label design.
This draws on the first psilocybin trial in U.S. veterans (Ellis et al., 2024), whose 12-month follow-up showed the antidepressant benefit itself waned across the year (Ellis et al., 2025). Together they temper enthusiasm: the acute gains are real but may be depression-driven and not durable.
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