On the Therapeutic Applications of Psilocybin

This event was recorded and is available to watch on our YouTube channel and portions of the audio will be released on our podcast.

If you need to request accessibility accommodations, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu at least one week prior to the event. For more information, explore our Frequently Asked Questions.

The field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has been growing rapidly in recent years with decriminalization efforts moving forward on local, state, and federal levels. A multitude of clinical research trials is showing promising results of therapies utilizing MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine as well as other medicines in the treatment of trauma, depression, addiction, end-of-life, and other mental health conditions. 

Psilocybin has been decriminalized in many cities in the United States and most recently has been approved for use in psychotherapy in the state of Oregon. In the latest studies, psilocybin has shown efficacy for patients suffering from depression, addiction, and end-of-life distress. And yet the potentials and risks of psilocybin are so unlike today's conventional mental health treatments that much work remains to be done to prepare mental health practitioners and the public for psychedelic therapies.  
 
Join clinician and CIIS professor Gisele Fernandes-Osterhold for an illuminating conversation with UCSF psychiatrist Brian Anderson on the benefits, risks, and therapeutic applications of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. Drawing on their shared background as mental health providers who have worked with many people who have both benefited and been harmed by psychedelic use in community settings, Brian and Gisele explore the current state of medical knowledge of psychedelics—both what the science can tell us and what it can't—and discuss what the key next steps are for the field of psychedelic medicines. 

This event is one in a three-part series of conversations exploring the rapidly growing field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

Brian Anderson, MD, MSc, is Assistant Clinical Professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and an attending psychiatrist in the Psychiatric Emergency Services at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. He also serves as an investigator with the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, and as a board member of the non-profit Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Over the last 15 years he has conducted both ethnographic and clinical research with people who use drugs, including ayahuasca-using religious groups in South America and crack cocaine and alcohol users in Mexico City. At UCSF in 2018 he conducted a pilot study of psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy for demoralization in older long-term AIDS survivor men. His research seeks to examine how people are both benefited and harmed by high-risk, controlled substance use in clinical and community settings. 

Gisele Fernandes-Osterhold is a licensed psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and graduate level psychology professor. Active in the mental health field for 20 years, she has extensive training and clinical experience in trauma-informed psychotherapy, using an integrative approach that is rooted in Somatic, Humanistic-Existential and Transpersonal psychologies. Being an immigrant to the United States and a woman of color, Gisele has developed a profound interest to multicultural issues, which has become one of the main topics of her work. Gisele’s personal approach to healing is rooted in her commitment to embodied spirituality, informed by her practices of yoga, dance and indigenous traditions of her native Brazil. Besides her psychotherapy practice, Gisele serves as core faculty member in the Integral Counseling Psychology program at CIIS, a mentor at the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at CIIS and a clinical supervisor at the Sage Institute.