Building the evidence base — and the practice infrastructure — so psychedelic-assisted therapy can move from research clinics to safe, well-regulated, community-grounded care. Spanning provincial policy, practitioner-led training, community harm-reduction guidance, and peer-reviewed studies of acceptability and effect.
Psychedelic-assisted therapy is one of the most consequential developments in mental-health treatment in decades. Trials of psilocybin, MDMA, and related compounds show promise for treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, end-of-life distress, and the psychological sequelae of adverse childhood experiences. But the move from research clinics to community settings is happening faster than regulators, prescribers, frontline practitioners, and the people who use these medicines can keep up with.
At the same time, the regulatory environment in Canada and elsewhere continues to treat psychedelic medicines primarily as a prohibition problem rather than a public-health one. Outdated scheduling, narrow special-access pathways, and professional-regulator positions that foreclose practice before the evidence has been weighed are limiting access for the very populations — people living with trauma, treatment-resistant depression, and end-of-life distress — for whom the evidence is strongest. Misguided prohibition isn’t protecting the public; it’s pushing use into unregulated settings while shutting clinicians and researchers out of the rooms where care is actually being delivered.
That double gap — between what we know and what we can safely deliver, and between an emerging evidence base and a regulatory posture that hasn’t caught up — is the problem my work is built to solve. The program operates across four levels at once: provincial policy (steering-committee work with the BC Ministry of Mental Health & Addictions), practitioner infrastructure (a community-of-practice-authored practice manual; a forthcoming international Delphi consensus study), community-based harm reduction (the TRIPS guide for lower-risk psilocybin use), and peer-reviewed evidence (acceptability, efficacy, and the contextual factors that shape outcomes). Together, these workstreams build the connective tissue between scientific evidence, clinical training, and public-health policy — so psychedelic medicine can be regulated proportionately, taught well, and delivered as a practical, well-agreed-upon, safe practice that people who need it can actually reach.
Some public-health challenges — psychedelic medicine among them — sit at the edge of what government funding can move quickly. The Blanche & Charlie Beckerman Scholar Award in Public Health Innovation, established through a gift from Andrew Beckerman in memory of his friend Tim MacKness, is what turned an emerging area of inquiry into a full program of evidence, practitioner infrastructure, and community-based guidance. The timeline below traces that arc: an early policy footprint that set the stage, followed by the Beckerman gift that catalysed everything that came next.
An early policy footprint inside the BC Ministry of Mental Health & Addictions. Useful for surfacing the policy-evidence gap — but the gap itself is what made clear that what this field actually needed was patient, targeted philanthropic investment.
Andrew Beckerman stepped up to support this program of research — in memory of his friend Tim MacKness — through the establishment of the Blanche & Charlie Beckerman Scholar Award in Public Health Innovation at SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences. His gift recognises psychedelic medicine as a serious, evidence-based response to adverse childhood experiences and trauma — the under-addressed conditions that sit beneath many of the contemporary public-health crises Canada is struggling with, including the toxic-drug crisis, treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and the mental-health sequelae of structural inequity. The Beckerman Award is what allows this program to move from steering-committee work into a full body of evidence, practice infrastructure, and community-based guidance.
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Policy infrastructure is where psychedelic medicine in BC will succeed or fail. I’ve served on the provincial committee guiding that infrastructure.
BC Ministry of Mental Health & Addictions. Contributed to the provincial steering committee shaping early policy direction, regulatory questions, and stakeholder engagement around psychedelic-assisted therapy in British Columbia.
Two flagship outputs — one already in practitioners’ hands, one launching soon — that translate practitioner knowledge into shared standards of care.
Led a community of practice of working psychedelic practitioners to develop a practitioner-authored manual covering the mechanisms, ethics, preparation, dosing, integration, and contextual factors that shape psychedelic therapy — written from the consulting room outward, by the people doing the work.
Developed out of the community-of-practice manual, this Delphi study will assess international consensus between prescribers and practitioners on the best methods for delivering psychedelic-assisted therapy. The aim is to move the needle — helping psychedelic medicine be recognised as a practical, well-agreed-upon, and safe practice that regulators, clinicians, and the public can have confidence in.
Two public-facing outputs, aimed at the two audiences whose decisions most shape harm and benefit on the ground.
An open letter on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, public protection, and evidence-informed regulation — calling for regulatory positions that protect the public without foreclosing access to an emerging evidence-based therapy. Signed by 602 practitioners, researchers, and community members.
Read the open letterAn introduction to community-based public-health guidance for lower-risk psilocybin use. Designed for people who are already using or considering psilocybin outside of clinical settings, the TRIPS guide translates the available evidence into practical, non-judgemental harm-reduction advice.
Read the TRIPS report (PDF)A growing body of peer-reviewed work on whether psychedelic medicines are wanted, whether they work, and what individual and contextual factors shape both belief and outcome.
“Change for systems is inherently hard — especially when dealing with novel approaches to addressing old challenges, such as psychedelic medicine. To achieve change, we need to accept and grapple with the complexity and be willing to act innovatively on what we know.”— from the announcement of the inaugural Beckerman Scholar in Public Health Innovation, SFU Faculty of Health Sciences
Psychedelic medicine is not a stand-alone interest. It connects to the syndemics-focused populations my research has long served — people coping with adverse childhood experiences, trauma, substance use, structural stigma, and the mental-health sequelae of overlapping public-health crises. The same evidence-to-practice gap shows up in all of them. This case study is one application of a broader commitment: translating research into the policy and practice infrastructure that frontline care actually needs.