A forum in Quebec, Canada, with 57 participants including patients, healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers, produced 16 recommendations for expanding access to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in palliative care. The recommendations address patient eligibility and equity, regulatory frameworks and respect for autonomy, logistical and organizational aspects, professional education and training, public awareness and information, and research. The report suggests these recommendations could guide similar efforts in other jurisdictions facing barriers to this therapy.
Group psilocybin-assisted therapy may help older long-term AIDS survivor gay men accept death, dying, and impermanence, as well as their illness and complex emotions. This secondary qualitative analysis of interviews from six participants found three major themes: acceptance of death, acceptance of illness, and embracing complex emotions. The findings suggest that the therapy fosters death acceptance by helping participants accept their illness and engage with the full range of emotions that arise when facing mortality. Further studies are needed to validate these results, which highlight the importance of focusing on death acceptance in psychedelic research with seriously ill populations.