Certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy

The provision of a supportive therapeutic setting prior to, during, and following drug administration is now the standard of care in the majority of uses of psychedelic medications for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. To fill this requirement, a variety of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) models and certifications (CPAT) have been developed to ensure the guiding clinician is sufficiently competent. These include:

• Embark - Canadian / US proprietary Cybin ltd training system released in June 2022.

By comparing and contrasting each offering a new Open Source Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy has been developed. Below is a brief summary of the analysis.

CPAT Content

The majority of PAP models have drawn influence from 3 main sources:

• Early work of PAP pioneers - mainly Grof, Greer and Tolbert and Stolaroff.
• Indigenous approaches
• Non-psychedelic therapeutic approaches

However, one often neglected source of data is accumulated by people who use psychedelics (PWUP) outside of clinical contexts. All sources highlight the need for controlling three key parameters:

1. Patient attributes: medical exclusions, psychological framing.
2. Setting attributes: music, light, furnishing, nature immersion.
3. Clinician attributes: background, experience, theoretical certification (such as CPAT)

CPAT Structure

All PAT training models training the practitioner to concentrate on three key phases of therapy. Preparation sessions make up the first stage and are intended to get individuals ready to benefit from the medication. The second stage of therapy is referred to as the medicine session(s), which refers to the period when medication is administered. The third phase, often known as "integration" involves a process of reflection on the medicine session and how it could motivate cognitive and behavioural changes that last after the course of therapy.

References