In this episode of the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast, Hannah Cross, LCSW joins to discuss group ketamine assisted psychotherapy for frontline healthcare workers. Hannah is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist who specializes in trauma healing and psychedelic integration, including work on LSD and psilocybin clinical trials. 

In this conversation, Hannah shares details from the study exploring group ketamine therapy in a cohort of ten frontline healthcare workers, discussing the study design, the intricacies of group therapy, and the specific dosing protocol and therapy regimen for the patients. She reveals the very promising results of this early study and also shares a number of emotional stories of transformation from the patients. In closing, Hannah discusses the early indicators of the durability of positive effects from this kind of ketamine assisted therapy and lists a number of additional on-going and upcoming studies of group ketamine treatments for other populations.

In this episode:

• The inspiration for this ketamine study
• How the frontline healthcare workers in the study were chosen
• What makes a person a good candidate for group therapy
• The protocol for the ketamine assisted therapy used in the study
• Why the therapy began with a low, sublingual dose of ketamine
• How psychotherapy was integrated with ketamine treatments in this study
• The reductions in PTSD, depression, and anxiety that resulted from the ketamine assisted therapy
• Why Hannah sometimes sees an increase in anxiety towards the beginning of the therapeutic process

Quotes:

“Ketamine can help people access more of that self-healing energy and when that’s present in a group setting and people are essentially able to shine this healing energy on each other, there’s this exponential healing I think can happen.” [7:16]

“When you wrap a ketamine experience up in experienced and effective therapy, there is this safety in the container that really allows people to have the inward focused journey under ketamine for that forty-five minutes to an hour.” [20:03]

Links:

Full study: Ketamine-Assisted Group Psychotherapy for Frontline Healthcare Workers with COVID-19-Related Burnout and PTSD: A Case Series of Effectiveness/Safety for 10 Participants

Numinus website

Group ketamine assisted therapy by Numinus

Hannah’s private practice, Wild Sunflower Counseling

Cedar Psychiatry website

Psychedelic Medicine Association

Porangui