Mitigating Ethical Issues in Training for Psychedelic Therapy
Neuroethics – April 01, 2025
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Protecting vulnerable individuals in psychedelic therapy demands rigorous ethical training, echoing principles from medical education and engineering ethics. Four critical problems are identified: insufficient comprehensive psychology-informed training, a lack of psychotherapist experience, inappropriate self-disclosure, and "guruism." Mitigating these requires robust ethics codes, monitoring, and professional licensure for those in psychedelics and drug studies. Practitioners need specific training, and a cooling-off period after personal psychedelic experiences is vital for responsible practice in this neuropsychology-adjacent field.
Abstract
Abstract In the present paper, we analyze the ethical issues in training for psychedelic therapy and discuss mitigation strategies for these issues. Specifically, after describing models of psychedelic training, we describe four problems of psychedelic training: (1) the imperative for comprehensive training due to vulnerability of participants, (2) psychedelic but not psychotherapeutic experience in training, (3) self-disclosure of psychedelic experience, and (4) guruism. In the following, we will delineate mitigation strategies with regard to these ethical issues: we underline the necessity of ethics codes and training, but also argue for the importance of monitoring and control, also through video recording. For accountability, psychedelic practitioners should hold professional licensure. When they offer psychotherapy, they should be trained in psychotherapy. Furthermore, a cooling off period after therapists’ personal experience with psychedelics (“honeymoon”) is warranted.