MAPS Canada School of Psychedelics

Talk abstract

Well-trained, competent therapists are crucial for safe delivery and good clinical outcomes in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP). To meet the growing need for well training PAP therapists, the Psychedelic Psychotherapy Research Group at the University Health Network, in Toronto Canada, has developed a Foundations of Psychedelic Psychotherapy training course, delivered through the Michener Institue of Education. The aim of this course is to provide foundational PAP training to registered clinicians that offers a broad introduction to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to provide effective and ethical psychedelic psychotherapy. This talk will explore components of a psychedelic therapist training course that are considered to be important as part of the curriculum. In addition, students from the first year of the course were invited to provide feedback on their perceptions of participating in the course, with a focus on understanding what they found to be beneficial and what they found to be lacking. Information was collected in the form of exit interviews, and weekly feedback surveys. Students were also invited to participate in an additional research study aimed at understanding their participation in two in-person breathwork weekend retreats that took place during the course. These breathwork weekends were designed to provide an experiential training component as part of their education that allowed students to practice being in the role of the patient/client (the breather) and in the role of the facilitator or clinician (the sitter). Results from qualitative interviews and quantitative measures provide insight into what specific aspects of the experiential training the students found to be beneficial, and whether breathwork is a useful proxy for achieving an altered state of consciousness similar to that achieved by ingesting a psychedelic. Interviews also revealed ethical issues inherent in this form of training that educators must consider if they wish to include group experiential training as part of their course curriculum.