Development of the Protective Strategies for Psychedelics Scale: A novel inventory to assess safety strategies in the context of psychedelics

A new 32-item scale, the Protective Strategies for Psychedelics Scale (PSPS), measures strategies people use to reduce harm when taking psychedelics. Two factors emerged: long-term preparation (mood, setting, scheduling) and short-term preparation (social context, health, other substances). The scale showed excellent reliability and was strongly correlated with existing protective behavior scales for cannabis and alcohol, and moderately with lifetime psychedelic use. The authors call for further validation in diverse samples.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Background: Individuals who use psychedelics take efforts to mitigate unintended consequences. Despite the demonstrated utility of analogous protective behavioral strategies (PBS) assessments for other substances, no standardized scale exists to capture these protective strategies for psychedelic use. Objective: The present study addresses a notable gap concerning the assessment of psychedelic use, specifically by developing a scale measuring the protective strategies employed around use, called the Protective Strategies for Psychedelics Scale (PSPS). Methods: A sample ( M age = 36.85 years old, standard deviation = 10.3; male = 61.9%; White = 85.2%) of 434 adults with lifetime use of psychedelics reported on initial qualitatively developed items for the PSPS, PBS scales for cannabis and alcohol, and use of alcohol, cannabis, and psychedelics. Results: Iterative principal components analyses began with 37 items and yielded a 32-item two-factor solution demonstrating excellent internal reliability (Cronbach’s α = .95) and accounted for 51.3% of the variance. Nineteen items loaded on PSPS factor 1, which focused on long-term preparation, emphasizing strategies focused on mood/intentions, preparing the substance, environment, and scheduling episode of use; 13 items loaded on factor 2, which focused on short-term preparation, highlighting strategies surrounding social context, health, and other substances. The PSPS demonstrated convergent validity with validated PBS scales for cannabis and alcohol ( r = 0.71–0.79, p < 0.001), and was moderately associated with lifetime psychedelic use ( r = 0.28, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The PSPS demonstrates promising psychometric properties, and future work validating the scale for diverse samples across research and clinical settings is warranted.