Profile: since leaving Kensington and Chelsea, Feilding-Mellen has become the director of ‘psychedelic venture studio’
Rock Feilding-Mellen was treated to dinners and entertainment by property lobbyists while in charge of housing at Kensington and Chelsea council. Photograph: Richard Gardner/Rex/Shutterstock
Rock Feilding-Mellen was treated to dinners and entertainment by property lobbyists while in charge of housing at Kensington and Chelsea council. Photograph: Richard Gardner/Rex/Shutterstock
Mon 17 May 2021 14.38 EDT
Last modified on Mon 17 May 2021 16.34 EDT
Rock Feilding-Mellen has run a property development company since 2009, and in 2011, at the age of 32, was promoted to a cabinet position at the Conservative stronghold of Kensington and Chelsea council.
Some veterans who took psychedelic drugs after finding no relief from prescribed medications say it changed their lives.
Paratroopers walk as they prepare equipment and load an aircraft at Fort Bragg, N.C., last year. (Spc. Hubert Delany III/U.S. Army via AP, File)
(CN) When Andrew Marr left the military in 2015, he no longer felt like the person he was before service. A former college athlete and self-described “warrior,” he suffered from a range of new health issues, including frequent panic attacks.
Veterans Affairs doctors put him on more than a dozen medications. Marr said he saw “zero benefit.”
Longread: Psilocybin-assisted Therapy for Mental Health: A New Paradigm?
Pioneering psychedelic research
We are living through a mental health crisis. Existing treatments barely scratch the surface of the problem, and have not translated into real world benefit for a huge number of people.
An estimated 1 billion people worldwide now live with a mental disorder, with depression affecting an estimated 264 million people of all ages around the world. It is the single biggest contributing factor to suicide, responsible, globally, for an estimated 800,000 deaths every year, and is the second most frequent cause of death among 15-29 year olds. In the UK, 30% of patients find existing therapies to be ineffective, with 1.2 million people suffering from treatment-resistant depression.
May 4, 2021
The popularization of psychedelics has already transformed the American mind. As tripping becomesnormalizedandlegal in the coming decade, the pace of change will only accelerate. There will be more openness to new ideas, both brilliant and insane. Commercial availability will also invigorate the market for synthetic religious experiences.
Having seen people gobble up hallucinogens in various contexts, I’m not particularly bothered by the substances themselves. The physical effects are negligible fatality rates are basically zero and many people derive real insight from their use. Certainly, a sizable minority become head-spun wackos, but compared to the utter devastation wrought by opiates, or even alcohol, it’s a peripheral concern.