Mind Medicine

Rick Dobin, PhD. is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). MAPS is a non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.

Rick did his Master's thesis on a survey of oncologists on cannabis in nausea control for cancer patients. He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on regulating medical uses for psychedelics and cannabis.

Rick and I chat about MAPS' mission, MDMA history, stigma, and backlash, dispelling common myths and rumours around the pharmacology of MDMA. We chat about MDMA's use in therapy - notably PTSD, how we form memories and why that's important in treating PTSD, drug rescheduling, MAPS research, and much, much, more.

Mind Medicine Australia

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies)

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Reid Robison, MD MBA, is a psychedelic psychiatrist & researcher who has led over 100 clinical trials in neuropsychiatry. He completed his undergraduate in Neuroscience at Brigham Young University and went on to medical school at the University of Utah where he earned both his MD and MBA. Of course, he didn’t stop there, after residency training in Psychiatry, Dr Robison completed fellowship training in Neurodevelopmental Genetics, followed by a postdoc in Bioinformatics. 

As an early adopter and researcher of Ketamine in psychiatry, Reid obtained his first grant to study ketamine in 2011. He also led the Utah site for the pivotal ketamine study for TRMDD by Janssen, leading up to the company’s recent FDA-approval of Spravato. To date, Reid has guided thousands of ketamine therapy journeys and hundreds of Spravato dosing sessions. 

Reid has built a number of therapeutic-driven companies including Tute Genomics, a venture-backed personalized medicine startup that was acquired in 2016, Cedar Psychiatry, which he co founded and serves as a Medical Director of Center for Change, a top Eating Disorder program. He is also a founding board member at the Utah-based non-profit organisation Psychedelic Institute. Reid is adjunct faculty at the University of Utah, founder of the Polizzi Free Clinic, and provides medical support and psychedelic therapy at plant medicine retreats abroad, and is the coordinating investigator for the MAPS MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy study of Eating Disorders.

Novamind

Cedar Psychiatry

Mind Medicine Australia

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Dr Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist, author and columnist. He works in the public, private and forensic sectors. He has served on local government, the government advisory body called the Australia Multicultural Council, the Advertising Standards Board and as a Governor of the Smith Family. His 2 books Fragile Nation and In Defence Of Shame examine the rise of mental health conditions and explore the complexity of mental distress. He was previously chosen by a Prime Minister's committee as one of a hundred future leaders of Australia.

Topics covered:

• The balance of health and economics in a pandemic
• The medicalisation of experience
• The 3 disciplines of mental health
• The primitive "lizard" brain
• Unending novelty exploiting primitive circuits
• Modern masculinity
• Psychedelic therapies
• "Shaking up" rigid circuits associated with mental health through psychedelic therapy

Mind Medicine Australia

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Dr. Prash Puspanathan (aka Dr. Prash P) has had an interesting pathway to the field of psychiatry. It was his initial interest in psychedelic medicine that prompted his curiosity into the world of the mind, leading him to study Psychiatry to further his interest in psychedelic medicine and its therapeutic potential. Prash has been a medical doctor at the Alfred Hospital where he has most recently held the position of Neuropsychiatry Fellow. He has been an ongoing advocate for medicine-assisted therapies and has spoken at events through Australia and at conferences worldwide. He started and managed Psychonauts Onymous, Australia’s first monthly gathering of multidisciplinary professionals to discuss current research in the field of psychedelics. He is also the CEO of Australia’s first dedicated Cryptocurrency brokerage, Caleb & Brown.

Topics Covered:

• The spectrum of mental illness
• Limitation of causes and diagnosing mental illness,
• Brain and mind disassociation
• The rewiring effects and new pathways of thinking that psychedelic medicine offers
• What empirical evidence we have for the psychedelic space
• Breaking away from the mould of using the word “drug”
• Recalling trauma through MDMA
• The difficulty in using language to explain a psychedelic experience
• The importance of integration
• Risks associated with psychedelics - recreational vs. therapeutic and short and long term implications

Mind Medicine Australia

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Renee Harvey has had an extensive career as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the National Health Service in the UK and is currently registered as a Provisional Psychologist in Australia. She was an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London in the study of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression and has led in service development for people with complex emotional needs. Renee established three specialist services, including staff appointments, training and supervision, and clinical delivery. She has also been involved in a wide range of training courses and treatment programs.

She is now the manager of the Psychedelic Therapy Development Program for Mind Medicine Australia. As part of that development program, she is leading the Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies, also known as CPAT,  in collaboration with leading psychedelic-assisted therapy practitioners in the USA and UK. This will allow qualified clinicians skills and awareness required to safely and effectively facilitate PAT.

Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (CPAT)

Mind Medicine Australia

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Dr. Alana Roy is a psychologist, mental health social worker, counselor, advocate, researcher, mindfulness meditation teacher, and therapist and has spent the last 13 years working in a broad range of settings including suicide prevention, trauma, sexual abuse, and family violence, and also the disability sector. She also has a diploma in Auslan Sign Language.

More recently, Alana has dedicated much of her time to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and plant medicines, providing integration therapeutic support services for communities across Australia, and is the National Practice Manager for Psychological Services for Mind Medicine Australia. She works at several universities as a Research Fellow and supervisor of students and passionately advocates for public policy, community education, and legislative changes so that these treatments are regulated and supported by a strong, connected, and skilled sector.

Alana utilizes and offers a wide range of therapies in her practice including emotion-focused therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), cognitive-behavioral therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness and meditation approaches. 

Topics covered:

• Current and future therapies and treatment options for mental health
• Potential complementary effects of mindfulness meditation and psilocybin
• Traditional rituals and practices for altering consciousness
• The categorization of drugs in modern society
• The default mode network - a brain network relating to self-referential processing that seems to be an important hub in mental illness, and much more.

Mind Medicine Australia

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Tania De Jong AM is the co-founder of Mind Medicine Australia. She's an inspirational speaker, singer, business woman and social entrepreneur who has founded a number of successful businesses including Creative Universe, leading innovation conference Creative Innovation Global, Inspiring Minds leadership programs, MTA Entertainment and Events, Dimension5 co-working space, and acclaimed singing group Pot-Pourri. Tania performs, speaks and presents leadership workshops across the globe. She has started multiple charities including Creativity Australia, With One Voice, The Song Room and in relevance to today’s episode (and this podcast), Mind Medicine Australia. 

Topics covered:

• The potential of psychedelic medicines for psychiatry.
• Social, behaviour and thought patterns associated with mental difficulty
• Phenomenology, pharmacology, and therapeutic potential of psilocybin and MDMA.
• The remarkable promise in the treatment of addiction, depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Mind Medicine Australia

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Mind Medicine Australia is a charity that is exclusively focused on the clinical application of medicinal psilocybin and medicinal MDMA for certain mental illnesses and enables the development of regulatory-approved and research-backed psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in Australia by developing therapist training, ethical guidelines, a center of excellence in psychedelic medicine, educational material and events, and supporting clinical research. 

At Mind Medicine Australia, we believe that everyone should have access to receiving the safest and most effective care, no matter what their condition, where they are treated, or who they are.

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