Adrienne Rivlin, partner, and Jess Sharpe, associate, at L.E.K. Consulting assess the rise in investment seen within the psychedelics market for mental health.
It is well recognised that mental illness is a growing worldwide problem – made worse by the Covid 19 pandemic – and that current mental health treatments are often unsatisfactory for many patients, working only partially or not at all, or with intolerable side-effects. Against this backdrop, psychedelics have recently emerged as a potential solution to revolutionise mental healthcare, and there has been a surge in investment in the space to tap into the huge commercial opportunities ahead.
2020 saw a ramp-up in psychedelics investment, and this accelerated in 2021. Investors have been attracted by increasingly impressive scientific results, larger and more robust clinical trials, advances in establishing the legal therapeutic framework for psychedelics, growing public support for a step change in mental healthcare, and the establishment of the infrastructure to deliver psychedelic assisted psychotherapies.