Journal of personality disorders
April 1, 2025
Albert Yeung, Michael Alpert, David Mischoulon
3 citations
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) involves impulsivity, emotional instability, and perceptual symptoms, and is often complicated by co-occurring conditions like depression. This case study describes ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) for a patient with both BPD and depression. KAP combines ketamine's antidepressant and psychedelic effects with psychotherapy, relying on the patient's inner healing intelligence and the therapist-patient relationship. Positive outcomes suggest that further systematic research into KAP for BPD and other personality disorders is warranted.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Kelley C O'Donnell, Lauren Okano, Michael Alpert et al.
A conceptual framework for MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD centers on the participant's inner healing intelligence as the primary agent of change, with the therapeutic relationship as the core facilitative condition. This inner-directed, holistic, self-directed, relational, and trauma-informed approach includes a non-pathologizing stance toward embodied experiences, such as intense emotional expression, multiplicity, suicidal ideation, and transpersonal experiences. Therapists bring psychodynamic, somatic, and transpersonal awareness, empathic attunement, relational skillfulness, and cultural humility. MDMA with this psychotherapy outperformed placebo with psychotherapy in Phase 2 and 3 trials, though significant symptom reduction also occurred in the placebo group, supporting the psychotherapy model itself.
Kelley O'Donnell, Michael Alpert, Lauren Okano et al.
preprint
MDMA-Assisted Therapy for PTSD uses a short-term, intensive psychotherapy model that includes three sessions facilitated by MDMA along with non-drug therapy sessions. The MDMA helps recall and process traumatic memories and enhances learning in social contexts, integrating top-down and bottom-up trauma care. This paper describes the psychotherapeutic concepts and theories behind this approach, centering on the participant's inner healing intelligence as the main agent of change, with the therapeutic relationship as a core facilitative condition. Phase 2 and 3 trials showed MDMA with therapy outperformed placebo with therapy in reducing PTSD symptoms, though significant symptom reduction also occurred in participants who received only therapy.