В Лесли открыт центр подготовки специалистов по психоделической терапии

Lesley University is launching a center next year to train behavioral health professionals in psychedelic-assisted therapies, another sign of growing acceptance of the once-taboo drugs’ potential in mental health treatment. The Cambridge school’s new Center for Psychedelic Healing and Psychotherapies, announced Tuesday, will be a hub for educational programs, research, and training focusing on the clinical use of drugs like psilocybin and LSD. The center is being established as psychedelics become an increasingly common option for patients with conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. The Lesley center will help professionals understand the “psychological, cultural, ethical, and therapeutic dimensions of emerging treatment approaches involving psychedelics,” the university’s announcement said. But no one is getting a degree in magic mushrooms just yet. The center will initially offer postgraduate certificates for clinicians and researchers, but will not involve any credit-bearing classes, as that requires going through accreditation. School officials didn’t rule out offering degree-seeking programs down the line. Psilocybin and most other psychedelics remain illegal under federal law and in most states, though they are decriminalized in some Massachusetts communities. Still, Lesley is not the first institution to set up a program focusing on the drug; Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, for instance, both have centers focused on psychedelic research. Lesley’s provost, Brian Becker, said students at the center will be trained to understand the sensory and bodily experiences that arise in psychedelic sessions. Students will learn to help clients make meaning from those sensations and support integration of these experiences into everyday life for therapeutic benefits, such as reduced anxiety. The center will not administer psychedelics itself, but instead teach students to draw from existing clinical skills like mindfulness and consider how they would apply them to patients on ‘trips.’ Lesley is known for its expressive therapy programs, including those in art, music, and drama. But in recent years, as the school’s enrollment has plummeted, these programs have seen trims. A Lesley spokesperson said the new center offers a path for the university to offer diverse programs that “meet the moment and the need.” Lesley said the center was funded by a “low seven-figure” donation from Eliza Dushku Palandjian and her husband, Peter Palandjian, longtime advocates of psychedelic-assisted therapy. The donation will fund salaries for the center director and faculty members, the cost of bringing on guest speakers, and recruitment and marketing efforts. “I believe universities have an important responsibility to bring rigor, ethics, compassion, and interdisciplinary thinking to emerging areas of practice,” Eliza Dushku Palandjian said in a statement. “Given the growing mental health crisis, we need more tools and more therapeutic modalities.” Eliza Dushku Palandjian, a Lesley alumna who spoke at the university’s commencement ceremony this year, and her husband previously donated $7.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, partly to help a clinic at the hospital develop “safe and effective approaches” for psychedelic therapies to treat addiction. In 2024, she was one of the leading voices in the push to legalize psychedelics in Massachusetts through a ballot question. Voters ultimately rejected Question 4, which would have created regulations for allowing adults to possess and grow psychedelics. Even so, a five-year pilot program that would allow licensed mental health care clinics to offer on-site psychedelic treatments was included in the $561 million economic development bill passed by the Massachusetts House last month. That followed President Trump signing an executive order in April that reduces federal barriers for psychedelic research. “There’s such a great sense of relief from those I have talked to that they finally found something that has been able to be effective for them,” said Becker, the Lesley provost, who is also a licensed psychologist and neuropsychologist, though he does not practice psychedelic-assisted therapy. The Lesley center is modeled after the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, which has a curriculum exploring the research and ethics behind psychedelic therapies. The California institute also launched a bachelor of science in psychedelic studies last year — the first of its kind in the country. Lesley officials met with the California program’s leaders early in the development of the center, Becker said. During the upcoming academic year, Lesley intends to hire a director for the center and construct the certificate curricula. It plans to enroll its first cohort of students for the 2027-2028 academic year. Yogev Toby can be reached at [email protected].