The European Psychiatric Association (EPA) is joining the Psychedelic Access and Research European Alliance (PAREA) as a full member.
PAREA is a multidisciplinary civil society partnership comprising 15 member organisations. These include EU patient organisations in the area of mental health, chronic pain and neurology, scientific associations, umbrella coalitions as well as psychedelic patient organisations and foundations.
Currently, the alliance works with several industry partners active in psychedelic R&D.
By engaging with the European Union institutions and European governments, PAREA acts as a collective voice seeking systemic change through policy and advocacy work leading to safe and responsible integration of psychedelic-assisted therapies into mainstream health services in Europe.
PAREA has now welcomed the main association representing psychiatry in Europe, the EPA, as a full member.
The EPA has individual members in 88 countries and 44 National Psychiatric Association Members who represent more than 78,000 European psychiatrists.
Its activities address the interests of psychiatrists in academia, research and practice throughout all stages of career development, and the organisation deals with psychiatry and its related disciplines- focusing on the improvement of care for the mentally ill as well as on the development of professional excellence.
Moving forward with PATs in Europe
Building on several decades of research which accelerated in the last few years, psychedelic-assisted therapies (PATs) offer a very real promise of becoming efficacious, rapidly acting, durable, toxicologically safe treatments for many brain disorders. These include mental health conditions such as depression, PTSD and anxiety.
Currently, 84 million Europeans struggle with mental health disorders and in a few years’ time, millions of them might be eligible for a prescription of PAT.
The fundamental therapeutic benefit of PATs comes from the combination of psychedelic medicine and psychotherapy. The use of a psychedelic medicine to catalyse psychotherapeutic process – known as integration – represents a paradigm shift in the approach to treating mental health conditions.
Founder and executive director of PAREA, Tadeusz Hawrot, commented: “Creating safe and sustainable integration models will be one of the most critical issues as we prepare for rolling out psychedelic-assisted therapies.
“Central to this will be training of psychedelic therapists. It’s no small task and will require developing rigorous training curricula for healthcare professionals who will be administering PATs.
“Independent certification boards and professional associations have to be involved very early in the process.
“The oversight and active involvement of the European Psychiatric Association will be indispensable in advancing these major tasks and in building a significant medical oversight over PATs in Europe.”
PAREA emphasises that professional guidelines with a strong emphasis on ethical conduct will need to be created – charting new territory in working with patients in altered states of consciousness, ensuring continuous professional training and creating platforms where interested licensed therapists can learn about this work.
