The record of our work

Wang Y, Johnson M, Marseille E. Cost-Effectiveness of Psilocybin Treatment Compared with Nicotine Replacement Therapy for Tobacco Cessation in Treatment-Resistant Cigarette Smokers. Nicotine and Tobacco Research. Under review, 2026.

Compares psilocybin-assisted treatment with nicotine replacement therapy for smokers who have not succeeded with standard cessation aids, a group for whom conventional options have largely run out.

Marseille E, Mitchell JM. Inappropriate Comparator and High Pricing in MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD: A Critique of the Lykos Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. Psychedelics. 2025.

Argues that the published cost-effectiveness analysis of Lykos Therapeutics’ MDMA-assisted therapy rested on an inappropriate comparator and an unjustifiably high assumed price. Both choices flatter the treatment’s apparent value, and correcting them changes what payers should be willing to pay for it.

Avancena A, Vuong L, Kahn JG, Marseille E. The cost-effectiveness of psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression in the US. Translational Psychiatry. 2025 (in press).

Models the lifetime costs and health outcomes of psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression in the United States, compared against the standard care those patients receive now.

Marseille E, Stauffer CS, Agrawal M, et al. Group psychedelic therapy: empirical estimates of cost-savings and improved access. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2023;14:1293243.

Estimates what changes when psychedelic therapy is delivered to groups rather than one patient at a time. Group delivery lowers cost per patient substantially and cuts the number of trained clinicians needed to serve a given population, which is the binding constraint on scaling these therapies.

Marseille E, Mitchell JM, Kahn JG. Updated cost-effectiveness of MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in the United States: findings from a phase 3 trial. PLoS One. 2022;17(2):e0263252. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0263252

Updates CEP’s earlier economic model of MDMA-assisted therapy for chronic PTSD using phase 3 trial results in place of phase 2 estimates. The therapy remains highly favorable economically once the stronger efficacy data are used.

Avancena ALV, Kahn JG, Marseille E. The costs and health benefits of expanded access to MDMA-assisted therapy for chronic and severe PTSD in the USA: a modeling study. Clinical Drug Investigation. 2022. doi:10.1007/s40261-022-01122-0

Models what would happen to national costs and population health if MDMA-assisted therapy were made broadly available to Americans with chronic and severe PTSD, rather than to trial participants alone.

Marseille E, Kahn JG, Yazar-Klosinski B, Doblin R. The cost-effectiveness of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for the treatment of chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD. PLoS One. 2020;15(10):e0239997. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239997

CEP’s first cost-effectiveness analysis of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, and the study that put the economic case for the therapy into the peer-reviewed literature. It found the treatment cost-saving relative to standard care over the modeled horizon.

Marseille E, Kettner H, Sgambati TJ, Kahn JG, Bertozzi S, Lucas W, Carhart-Harris R, Keltner D, Raison C. Well-being as a primary endpoint in clinical trials: a call for consensus. npj Mental Health Research. 2026;5:39.

Psychiatric trials judge success mainly by symptom reduction, while patients describe recovery in terms of meaning, vitality, and functioning. This paper makes the case for adopting well-being as a co-primary endpoint, developed through a Delphi consensus process into a validated instrument, with safeguards against treatments that raise well-being while leaving the underlying condition untreated.

Leeman L, Armstrong M, Menashi D, Nayo-Washington H, Marseille E, Herrera J, Romero C, Page-Reeves J. Community engagement as a foundation for implementation research for group psilocybin assisted therapy in New Mexico. Frontiers in Public Health. 2026;14. June 16, 2026.

Describes how community engagement was used to build the foundation for implementation research on group psilocybin-assisted therapy in New Mexico, and what that process changed about how the work was designed.

Marseille E, Bertozzi S, Kahn JG. The economics of psychedelic-assisted therapies: a research agenda. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2022;13:1025726. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1025726

Sets out the economic questions the field has to answer before coverage and scale-up become possible, and the order in which they need answering. It is the framing paper behind much of CEP’s subsequent work.

Marseille E, Chernoloz O, Orlov O. The potential economic and public health impact of MDMA-assisted group therapy for PTSD in Ukraine. World Medical & Health Policy. 2025 (in press).

Models the health and economic effects of delivering MDMA-assisted group therapy for PTSD in Ukraine, where the trauma burden created by the war is far larger than the existing mental health system can treat.

Lam K, Griffin C, Kantipudi S, Mwai D, Kahn JG, Marseille E. Assessing readiness for implementation of psychedelic-assisted mental health therapy in low- and middle-income countries. Journal of Psychedelic Studies. 2025 (in press).

Assesses what low- and middle-income countries would need in place — clinical capacity, regulatory pathways, financing — before psychedelic-assisted therapy could be implemented, and how ready a range of them currently are.

Truax B, Marseille E, Muir O, Glastra J. Scaling Psychedelic Therapies in the Health System. Norman S, McQuillan B, Horner S, eds. BrainFutures and the UC Berkeley Collaborative for the Economics of Psychedelics; March 2025.

Lays out what health systems would need in order to deliver psychedelic therapies at scale: workforce, facilities, reimbursement pathways, and the operational steps that sit between regulatory approval and routine clinical care.

Rab SF, et al. An estimate of the number of people with clinical depression eligible for psilocybin-assisted therapy in the United States. Psychedelics. 2024.

Estimates that 56 to 62 percent of Americans currently being treated for depression — roughly 5.1 to 5.6 million people — would meet the eligibility criteria used in psilocybin clinical trials. Nearly a third of that figure comes from including patients with co-occurring alcohol and substance use disorders, who are excluded from many trials but may benefit.

Shjju S, Tiimula R, Marseille E. Self-medication with psychedelics: a scoping review and narrative synthesis of review-level evidence. Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy. 2026.

Synthesizes the review-level evidence on people who use psychedelics to treat themselves: who does it, for which conditions, and what the existing literature can and cannot say about the results.

Abramsky-Sze S, Marseille E, Matzopoulos R, Morlock R, Lerer L. Characteristics and mental health of psychedelic mushroom and multi-psychedelic users relative to non-psychedelic users in American adults, 2020–2021. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2025;16:1508811.

Compares the demographic profile and mental health of American adults who use psilocybin mushrooms, or several psychedelics, against those who use none, drawing on national survey data from 2020 and 2021.