Dr. Cameron Lacey has spent years studying how psychedelics might help treat depression and other mood disorders. Last week, he became the first and only psychiatrist in New Zealand allowed to prescribe psilocybin, the hallucinogenic found in “magic mushrooms.”

       The approval from New Zealand’s health ministry is the latest boost to a growing global movement to study and use psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA — long relegated to the fringes of psychiatry — to treat depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse.

       Dr. Lacey was chosen because of his extensive experience in safely using psilocybin for psychiatric treatment during clinical trials, according to the health ministry. He said that in 2021, he started looking into a psilocybin clinical trial after he noticed that many of his patients were not responding to antidepressant medications.

       The government has said the psilocybin treatments will be strictly controlled. Patients will not be able to simply walk away from an appointment with a tablet or mixture containing psilocybin, which New Zealand still classifies as an illicit drug, alongside heroin and cocaine.

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       Instead, Dr. Lacey said, they will get their first dose after three sessions of talk therapy. Then, while lying down or sitting in a recliner, wearing eye masks and noise-canceling headphones, patients will receive 25 milligrams of psilocybin in a capsule.

       The hallucinogenic experience, or trip, begins around 45 minutes later, he said, as sounds of nature and traditional Māori music play through the headphones. The trip lasts around eight hours.

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