Psychedelic substances, associated with strict regulatory frameworks and historical stigmas, are the subject of significant medical and social debate. A growing network of researchers have sparked a resurgence of interest in their application for mental health conditions resistant to conventional clinical interventions.
With the high level of substance regulation and extremely limited access, health-care professionals across Canada find that to help their patients, they must put their careers and professional licences on the line.
How can practitioners develop occupational expertise and establish legitimacy when the work they are doing exists in a legal and social grey zone?
To study this grey zone and how practitioners can navigate it, Professor Madeline Toubiana, PhD candidate Carolina Jiménez Peña and their team have been awarded a Telfer SMRG Research Development Grant for their project titled “Psychedelic-assisted therapy: Occupational emergence under conditions of legal liminality.”
While psychedelic substances remain largely prohibited in many countries, including Canada, there’s a documented history of their use in various Indigenous cultures for spiritual and psychological purposes. Recently, the emergence of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), in which health-care professionals employ psychedelic substances in a psychotherapeutic framework, has shown promise in treating difficult mental health conditions such as severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression.
In their research, Toubiana and her team will examine “legal liminality,” which refers to the state of practitioners in this field who exist in a gray legal area and often experience uncertainty and vulnerability regarding their rights and protections when employing medical psychedelics. Many essential psychedelics are completely illegal, while some are only permitted within government-approved clinical trials or through exceptional case-by-case Health Canada exemptions.
This thin line between the legal and illegal domains creates an extraordinarily complex environment for practitioners to establish their occupational status, the researchers believe. That said, practitioners develop a unique expertise that differs from other mental health practitioners.
The research will discover how those in this emerging practice navigate these polarizing challenges, leading to scholarly understanding, stigma management and identity construction of the field, to inform public policy development as Canada considers regulatory frameworks for psychedelic therapy.
