Educate, Empower, and Heal Part 2

The Psilocybin Assisted Therapy Association (PATA) was created to?educate, empower, and heal: to provide information to potential consumers of psilocybin and point them to additional resources, empower them to express interest in psilocybin and pursue its therapeutic benefits when appropriate, and?maximize the healing potential of a psilocybin experience when used for mental health.?

In part one of this series on our three core pillars, we looked at how PATA was created as a response to OPS to fill a gap in information.?This part will explore how PATA aims to empower consumers and therapists, the two types of people whose roles are critical in psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT), and why empowering others with knowledge is always ethical.

We believe everyone benefits from fair, truthful disclosure about psilocybin, Oregon Psilocybin Services (OPS), and PAT. Most importantly, having enough info about psilocybin allows potential consumers to feel more confident in their choice of whether and how to use it. Knowing about the strengths and limitations of OPS is also highly important, as it’s a completely new system that is already surrounded by misinformation. Some of the misinformation is simply the effect of introducing a new system for consuming psilocybin legally. There are inherent risks in the new system, and it is costly to those being licensed: growers, facilities, facilitators, and facilitator training programs. These players all want the system to work.

It’s hard to say how much responsibility should fall on the shoulders of those providing OPS. After all, they are?never going to be as knowledgeable as the consumers themselves regarding their own mental health needs, and they need to make their livelihood sustainable, so can we ask them to first know and then prioritize consumer needs above all else? OPS has taken great care to provide as much protection for all parties as possible, but the truth is that it is an informed-consent model only at this point (like skydiving or horseback riding), and this simply isn’t going to be sufficient for all types of consumers.?Our primary focus at PATA is the consumers, and secondary focus is on those licensed mental health practitioners (LMHPs) who will ethically help consumers with PAT.

As it stands now in the United States, PAT in the public arena is not just in its infancy, it is a newborn. It started with researchers at universities and hospitals who created a type of PAT that they can do while legally funded and staffed by medical professionals and research psychologists. PAT in that respect takes place in a highly specialized environment performed briefly for a select few in a model that is unrealistic outside of those parameters.?

Having just been born outside of the research environment in the US, PAT is now being defined and designed, but it does not have to be from scratch. In fact,?our PATA model was designed to help define how PAT can be conducted outside of the clinical research model.?Those who know of the research, the unique qualities of psilocybin, and can combine these in a way that helps others while minimizing potential harm, can ethically perform PAT.?

This is why we believe LMHPs are best suited to develop and perform PAT. LMHPs are already trained in mental health assessment, clinical diagnosis, and often and multiple, research-based modalities of therapeutic support (CBT, ACT, IFS, EMDR, psychoanalysis, etc). They are trained further every year, overseen by a licensing board, bound by a code of ethics similar to medical professionals (i.e. “do no harm”), and usually experienced in crisis response.

Yet a problem that many LMHPs face is the fear of talking to clients, when asked or when appropriate, about the healing potential of psilocybin while it’s still a federally illegal substance and enshrouded in many myths. It helps to remember that it is also a substance that has received breakthrough therapy status from the FDA, and many say it is on track to receive FDA approval to treat some mental health conditions within the next 3 to 5 years.?We believe it is always ethical for LMHPs to have an open discussion for information-sharing purposes because it is, like it or not, already helping people reduce mental health symptoms and addressing a national mental health crisis.

At PATA we do not recommend or advocate for LMHPs to recommend psilocybin or any other drug, nor is there any mechanism or plan for referring clients to OPS or any other psychedelic provider. What we do is?recognize the importance of personal empowerment, and we believe it is highly ethical not to limit what you’re willing to explore with a client if it might help them recover and heal. As an LMHP myself, I believe clients are ultimately their own best guide and know themselves the best.?

At PATA, we especially want to empower potential consumers of psilocybin – with information, options, and encouragement to pursue something if they’ve found, after all their searching, that it calls to them and their process of healing. Psilocybin has qualities that may work with the human brain to open a window of learning flexibility, which in turn can be a springboard for change for many people who have tried other methods without success. Psilocybin is not a magic bullet, it is not always easy to take, and in fact it can cause short- or long-term distress for some. While psilocybin may be the medicine, the real change occurs with proper planning and ongoing integration.?

In Oregon, psilocybin is becoming a business. While we believe psilocybin belongs to everyone and should be available for use by all informed consumers who want it, making a business of psilocybin is fraught with risks and problems.?A major concern we want to address is the potential for harm to consumers.

In our next article, we’ll explore PATA’s goal to promote healing and minimize the risk of using psilocybin through education and empowerment.

By Lisa Ritter, LPC. Co-Founder and Chief Clinical Officer. The Psilocybin Assisted Therapy Association