What is it about?
Psychedelic therapies require skilled facilitators. Right now, standards and best practices for training the tomorrow's psychedelic facilitators are still forming. We examined the current landscape of psychedelic facilitation training programs in the US and spoke in depth with 13 emerging and established programs. We sought to understand how they developed and implemented their training, what was important to them, and what kinds of choices they made in the creation of their curricula. We found consistent practices around safety, equity, and education on psychedelic compounds, as well as considerable heterogeneity in therapeutic approaches, pedagogy philosophy, and approaches to spiritually responsive care.
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Why is it important?
High standards and quality practices in psychedelic facilitation training will foundational to the success of psychedelic-assisted therapies. Right now, those standards and practices are still in formation: the field must come together and inform the approaches for psychedelic education moving forward.
Perspectives
I think there's tremendous opportunity for collaborative improvement in psychedelic facilitation training. We should all be talking to one another and learning from each other about what works, in what context, and how. This is a step toward that goal. I'm incredibly grateful to the programs that spoke with us and shared based on their experience - it has felt like sifting through a treasure trove of valuable practices and ideas for psychedelic training.
Roman Palitsky
Emory University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A landscape analysis of psychedelic facilitation training in the US, PLOS One, May 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0350037.
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