Psychedelic Knowledge and Opinions in Psychiatrists at Two Professional Conferences: An Exploratory Survey

ABSTRACT

Despite resurgent interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy, our insights into psychiatrists’ knowledge and opinions about medicinal psychedelic applications are surprisingly narrow. Therefore, we anonymously surveyed psychiatrists attending psychedelic didactic presentations at two national meetings about these issues using a 26-item questionnaire. Response rate was 40.20% (106/264). Respondents were 41.73 ± 13.31 years old (range: 24–80) and 64.42% were male. They largely believed psychedelics show treatment promise and strongly supported federal funding for medicinal psychedelic research. The most common concerns were the lack of trained psychedelic-assisted therapy providers, the logistics of psychedelic-assisted therapy delivery, the administration of psychedelics for patients with contraindications, and diversion. The most desired psychedelic-related educational topics were potential benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy, how to conduct psychedelic-assisted therapy, psychedelic pharmacology, and psychedelic side effects. Factors associated with increased belief in psychedelics’ treatment potential included working primarily in research, scoring higher on a psychedelic knowledge test, and reporting less concern about psychedelics’ addictive potential. Working primarily in research and consult-liaison psychiatry fellowship training were positively associated with support for medicinal psychedelic legalization, while increased concerns about addictive potential and attending psychiatrist status were negatively associated. Support for legalization of non-medicinal psychedelic use was negatively associated with age and positively associated with support for legalization of medicinal psychedelic use.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychedelics
• survey
• psychiatrists
• Hallucinogens
• psychedelic-assisted therapy

Data availability statement

Those interested in obtaining our data can contact Dr. Barnett for a copy.

Disclosure statement

• Dr. Beaussant and Dr. King have no funding or potential conflicts of interest to report.

• Dr. Barnett has received stock options from CB Therapeutics as compensation for advisory services. He also receives monetary compensation for editorial work for DynaMed Plus (EBSCO Industries, Inc) and owns personal stock in Compass Pathways.

• Dr. Doblin is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which funds research into therapeutic uses of psychedelic compounds.

Additional information

Funding

The study went unfunded.