Community Strategising about
Psychedelic Therapy in Aotearoa

An 18-month project to explore what psychedelic therapy in Aotearoa New Zealand could - and should - look like.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is currently being developed as a mental health treatment that combines psychedelics with therapeutic support.

Psychedelics include certain plants, fungi, and synthetic chemicals that can produce profound changes in consciousness including experiences of awe, love, a deep sense of connection, and spiritual insight.

Globally over the last 10 years, PAT has risen to prominence for a range of mental health conditions, from depression to anxiety and addiction to PTSD, with a number of pharmaceutical companies interested in turning PAT into a large-scale mental health intervention.

But the use of psychedelics is not new. The medicalisation of PAT is happening within a context of longterm Indigenous, religious, laboratory, and underground and overground clinical use of psychedelics.

Community Strategising about Psychedelic Therapy in Aotearoa is an 18-month project to cultivate relationships within and between communities who have a stake in PAT. The goal of the project is to collectively strategise about what psychedelic-assisted therapy in Aotearoa New Zealand could and should look like.

The kaupapa (ethos) of this project is to be inclusive, participatory, and capacity-building.

We hope to support discussions about PAT that build the capacity of communities to set the terms of what PAT in Aotearoa could and should look like.

In doing so, we are committed to harm reduction, valuing multiple forms of expertise, and tino rangatiratanga (Indigenous self-determination).

The communities we hope to strategise with include:

  • Rongoā practitioners – expert in traditional Māori healing;

  • Experts in spirituality – from tōhunga of wairua to spiritual chaplains;

  • People with lived and living experience of the mental healthcare system – including the dangers of over-medicalisation and the overhyping of newly available healthcare treatments;

  • Harm reduction practitioners – expert in holding space for those experiencing challenging psychedelic experiences, or ‘bad trips’;

  • Psychedelic therapists – from underground therapists and healers to those setting up new and emerging professional therapy training programmes.