Ep 534: Transforming Psychiatry with Dr. Will Van Derveer

In this episode, Dr. Jannine Krause sits down with Dr. Will Van Derveer, a global leader in integrative psychiatry, to explore how he’s transforming mental health care by addressing the root causes of psychological suffering. Frustrated with the limitations of conventional psychiatric practices, Dr. Van Derveer has pioneered holistic approaches that tackle conditions like depression, anxiety, and insomnia through diet, lifestyle, mindfulness, gut health, and hormone balance.

We discuss his groundbreaking work with the Integrative Psychiatry Institute, where he trains psychiatrists and other medical health practitioners in advanced treatments, including MDMA- and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Dr. Van Derveer also shares insights from over two decades of blending natural and evidence-based methods, drawing on his expertise in shamanism, EMDR, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, cognitive behavioral therapy, and hypnosis.

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone curious about the future of mental health care and the power of integrative approaches to achieve true well-being.

Resources Mentioned:

• Dr. Will Van Derveer’s Clinic: Integrative Psychiatry Center
• Training Programs for Psychiatrists: Integrative Psychiatry Institute
• Research on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD

Connect with Dr. Will Van Derveer:

• Website: psychiatryinstitute.com

Join Us:
If you’re inspired by this episode, subscribe to the podcast and leave a review! Share your thoughts and tag us on social media—we’d love to hear your takeaways.

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Podcast Transcript

0:54 – Intro

3:20 – Dr. Will’s background

10:51 – The medicine is the treatment

16:07 – Ketamine and support

19:28 – Who is ketamine for

22:40 – Psilocybin’s Vs. Ketamine

25:40 – Psychedelic tourism

29:04 – MDMA

32:26 – Does MDMA work better in certain demographics or with certain types of PTSD?

36:44 – Psychedelics Vs. energy / mind work

44:58 – What to look for in a Ketamine clinic

49:19 – How to connect with Dr. Will

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[Preview] But if the healthy routines conversation’s not happening because the view of the provider

is that the chemical is going to do all the work of the healing, you’re already up a

creek without a paddle, in my opinion.

The risk here is that psychedelics can be perceived the same way where the MDMA or the

psilocybin or the ketamine is going to be the agent of change.

And my job, and I’m exaggerating a little bit here to make the point, is my job as a

patient is to lie back on this easy chair and let the magic of the chemical do its thing to me.

As opposed to here’s an ally. It’s going to maybe open some doors in your mind to help you

re-examine the way you think about yourself. [Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast where health

junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds,

and fit physiques for life.

JANNINE: Hey, health junkies.

On this episode of the Health Fix podcast,

I’m interviewing Dr. Will Van Derveer.

He’s a global leader in integrative psychiatry.

He’s transforming mental healthcare

by addressing the root cause of conditions.

And today we’re gonna be talking about psychedelic medicine

and the different trial.

He’s been on with MDMA.

We’re just gonna dive into where a lot of us

becoming dissatisfied with the conventional psychiatric approaches and really how Dr.

Will’s pioneered holistic treatments that do focus on diet, lifestyle, mindfulness, gut health,

hormone health, and all the things to help address chronic stress and psychological suffering that’s

going on in the universe right now. Now Dr. Will is the co-founder of Integrative Psychiatry

Institute, he trains hundreds of psychiatrists and other docs, including

natural vats. In MDMA, ketamine assisted psychotherapy and also works quite a bit

too with psilocybins. And so this is great stuff. Man, he’s got a lot of

knowledge and just hearing his research background side of MDMA and its impact

on PTSD is mind blowing.

If someone you know is suffering with a mental health condition or you yourself are struggling

and you’re not seeing results with traditional methods of counseling, medication, even diet

and supplements, this podcast is for you.

It’ll help you to get some insight into some of the up and coming therapies that have been

around a while, but now they’re gaining more popularity.

So let’s introduce you to Dr. Will Van Derveer.

Dr. Will, welcome to The Health Fix Podcast.

Dr. Will: Great to be here, Jannine.

Thanks for having me.

JANNINE: Hey, no problem.

I was definitely going to tell everybody in the intro, but I’m telling it now.

I have to join your program because I’m so excited about this in terms of offering psychedelics

to my clients and just helping folks expand their capabilities in terms of their health.

So of course we got to talk first and foremost and get to the basics with you.

How did you come to psychiatry in the first place and then what brought you to psychedelic

medicine?

DR. WILL: Well, it was a bit of a winding road for me.

I wasn’t pre-med in college.

I was studying anthropology and art history and I had a mentor who I was doing an independent

study with. And he was a researcher in the field of genetics in

schizophrenia. And he sent me to the hospital on the campus where I

was in Philadelphia, and said, go interview these people. And

they were folks who had been hospitalized in acute psychosis.

And I had this weird kind of full body. Oh, these are my people

experience when I walked into the ward. And so it was my senior

year and I had to pivot and decide to go do all my pre-med stuff after graduation and

then ended up in medical school with a pretty good idea that I was probably going to go

into psychiatry.

But I almost got derailed because I loved the body so much and physiology and just how

things work in general.

But I stayed the course and ended up out here in Colorado for my residency program.

But having come from my background with anthropology and studying how different groups of people

do healing, I was always already pretty skeptical about reductionistic thinking and medicine.

Particularly in psychiatry, the one pill for one ill and the notion of a chemical imbalance

in the brain and so on just never really rang true for me.

So I was a skeptic.

And then I had a big sort of cratering out of my excitement about practicing psychiatry

when a couple of years into my practice after graduation, I just had more and more people

entering this category that we call in medicine, treatment resistance.

So people who weren’t getting well from psychotherapy, they weren’t getting well from medications

or a combination of both.

And I just felt like I was getting crushed under this, um, the weight of all of these

people not responding to what I’d been trained to give them for treatment.

And I decided to take a year off and just go meditate and try and figure it out.

So I closed my practice and deep down, this was in 2004 deep down.

I thought I wasn’t going to ever come back.

I thought, okay, here’s my big escape.

I’m going to be like a meditator or something.

I don’t know what.

And then I ran into, I think as a naturopath, you probably love this.

Um, I went back to, I was living in this tiny town four hours from here and

called Crestone.

And it was a really interesting community.

JANNINE: Uh huh.

DR. WILL: You’ve heard of it.

JANNINE: Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That that’s where you go to get, get the deeper side of things.

DR. WILL: Yes.

Exactly.

And so I’m meditating hours a day and.

um, you know, pretty much like full time meditator, but we would, I would come back to Boulder and

get a, you know, fill the entire car with groceries and go back. And so I was in Boulder for one of

these grocery runs and I ran into this farmer patient who I had treated for generalized anxiety.

I did all the things SSRI, you know, benzodiazepine, cognitive therapy. And he pretty much didn’t

get much benefit from what I did with him for over a year. We met once a week for over a year.

So I ran into him and he says, “Look, I wanted to give you some feedback. First of all,

thanks for the therapy. I really appreciate that. But I want you to know that I went and saw a

naturopathic doctor after he left out. I got tested for celiac disease, came back positive,

stopped eating wheat, and over about six weeks, my anxiety completely went away.

And then I went gradually off of my medication and I still have no anxiety into this day.

I stay in touch with him. He’s, he lives close to me. He still has no anxiety.

And that was a massive turning point for me because I realized that it wasn’t a problem with psychiatry.

I was the problem. I didn’t have enough education, enough understanding.

I needed to get outside the box. So that put me on this integrative medicine track

track and led down the road to eventually psychedelic therapy.

JANNINE: Oh, go figure.

I mean, I can resonate.

I can resonate, right?

Because when you’re working so hard with someone and you’ve worked with them so long

and then you do see them and they’re like, “Hey, I saw this.

This helped me.”

You’re like, “Oh.”

Or you’re like, “I had no idea about this.”

And I definitely have come to that in my practice and that’s why I’m looking into the integrative

psychiatry side of things because I’m going, you know, the diets, the supplements, my side of things

isn’t doing the trick. People are getting sicker. And I’m sure you’ve probably seen this too in the

last probably since COVID. Really, there’s a lot of energetic imbalance in folks.

DR. WILL: Very severe. Yeah. Hockey stick. It’s scary.

JANNINE: Yeah, it is. It is. And so it’s like, okay, where do we go from here? And definitely the

the psychedelics folks are starting to come across them.

They’re going, okay, doc, where do I go for ketamine?

Where do I go?

How do I get a hold of some MDMA?

How do I, who should I go to for a Psilocybin

journey and I’m literally besides

the nurse practitioners that I know with ketamine,

practices, I’m like, I don’t know.

I don’t know because I can’t trust it.

And I’m sure you’ve probably seen that

since you’ve created programs to help support folks like us.

DR. WILL: For sure.

Yeah. Yeah. The interest in psychedelic therapy really skyrocketed with Michael Pawn’s book in

2018. And then as you pointed out, in COVID, we saw this massive rise. It was already a, I would

say a global pandemic of mental health challenges. But after that, it just went off the charts. And

You know, we’re trending toward just to give folks a context.

It’s predicted by 2030, which is just a few years away that depression will be

the biggest cause of disability in the world.

We have about 350 million people worldwide with depression and about a third of

them end up in this thing that we’re calling treatment resistance, which I

don’t I don’t like the term because it kind of blames the client a little bit.

I prefer to call it practitioner ignorance is what we call it at our Institute, because

there are things to learn.

And there are ways, as you pointed out, the excitement about psychedelic therapy is that

it seems to be very effective, particularly for these people in the highest need.

So it’s very exciting.

And yeah, we can talk about all the different things like where things are available, what

the differences are between the different medicines,

who they can be right for, wrong for, and so on.

JANNINE: Absolutely, I would love to go into that

because I’m sitting here where clients will come in.

It’s almost every day now, someone’s like,

“Hey, what do you think about this?

“I saw this come across my screen online,

“this person’s offering this.”

And really the biggest question is between

these various psychedelics out there.

Yeah, how do we choose and how do we know what’s right

for who, love to learn that.

DR. WILL: Well, and I think it also depends on how it’s practiced

as well, so as you’re pointing out.

So, you know, in psychiatry, we still,

in mainstream psychiatry, we still suffer from the medicine

is the treatment, the antidepressant,

or whatever the chemical as you put in your mouth

is the treatment.

And so the risk here is that psychedelics

can be perceived the same way,

where the MDMA or the psilocybin or the ketamine

is going to be the agent of change.

And my job, and I’m exaggerating a little bit here

to make the point is my job as a patient

is to lie back on this easy chair

and let the magic of the chemical do is thing to me.

As opposed to, here’s an ally.

It’s going to maybe open some doors in your mind

to help you re-examine the way you think about yourself,

help you look at some of the traumas that you’ve been through and the conclusions that you drew about yourself and your the world you live in from the traumas and give you an opportunity to redesign your internal landscape.

Now, that’s easier said than done, but I think the opportunity

is what happens in

inquiry with the support of the chemical on board.

So I think the framework is important.

JANNINE: Absolutely, absolutely.

Because I would be lying if I said even in the naturopathic realm, and maybe it’s different

now in terms of our education, but you still are within the medical system where it is,

the thing is going to fix the problem, not you as the person.

It takes all of that off of you.

And I still have people that come to me and say, Doc, fix me.

And I’ve debated about changing my podcast title because I don’t want people to think

it’s fixed.

It’s more like a junkie getting there fixed in terms of information.

But at the same time, context of how we think about these things.

Because yeah, I have so many people that are like, I’m going to go do my ketamine and the

ketamine is going to solve all the problems.

DR. WILL: Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s, you know, and I have a lot of compassion for people in deep suffering who all they

want to do is just feel better.

I totally get that.

But if you think about it, if you want to experience a long, healthy, vibrant, enjoyable

life, it takes work to maintain our health.

It’s not like it’s not given to you.

You can’t lie on the couch and not exercise and think that your body’s going to feel good.

You can’t eat junk food and think your body’s going to feel good.

So telling people to go exercise and change their diet when they’re very depressed is

a non-starter, right? So we have to help them, we have to catalyze the change and give them

a leg up so they can actually get into healthier routines. But if the healthy routines conversation

is not happening because the view of the provider is that the chemical is going to do all the

work of the healing, you’re already up a creek without paddle, in my opinion. And I realize

I’m kind of preaching to the choir here with speaking this way with you and your audience.

But it’s worth mentioning that when you look at clinics that provide ketamine, most of the

people providing ketamine in the context is not with psychotherapy.

It’s not with this deeper, more holistic vision that you and I share.

It’s more like, here’s your treatment.

We’ll collect your $1,000 session and you’ll come back next week and get another one.

And it’s sort of like one practitioner at a conference said, I think it’s a little sinister,

but I think it’s accurate.

It’s like the patient is an annuity for the provider.

The whole idea of chronic medication that you have to take for the rest of your life

is an economic framework that sustains…

I wouldn’t say I don’t think practitioners want to be in that framework either is the

thing.

So we want to see people get well and stay well, but health care or mental health care

behind them as much as possible.

So I’ll get off my soapbox there.

JANNINE: Oh, I mean, I’m right with you on that.

Well, I’m right with you because, you know, I’d much rather have someone come in a couple

of times than I see them on the street and they’re all good.

You know that that’s that’s the goal or they come in only to get a little tweak, you know,

And we just little boost, little tweak.

We just do a run of labs and make sure all’s good.

I mean, I love that.

I would love that to be where things are at.

But unfortunately, you know, we still–

I cringe every time I practice when I’m like, it’s been months.

And I’m like, I cannot get–

you know, I cannot get to the bottom of this with this person.

And I used to beat myself up and say, it’s all my fault.

I’m a dumb dawg.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

And of course, lots of therapy later.

You know, here we are.

But one of the biggest, I think, misconceptions,

like you’re saying, and one of the things

with different practices, much like the ketamine clinics

I’ve seen, is yeah, it’s much like I joke

as like a hormone clinic in a strip mall.

You go in, you get the thing, you come out,

and life’s supposed to be better.

And this is where I definitely wanna pick your brain

because I’ve had multiple patients go into these types

of clinics looking for solutions.

And then end up in my office in a state

that they can’t get out of where we’re trying to work on things.

And they have no psychiatrists.

They’ve never had a psychiatry appointment.

They’ve only had counselors.

And I’m sitting here trying to figure out what do I do.

And so I’m guessing you’ve seen this happen over and over again too.

DR. WILL: Yeah, unfortunately, we at our clinic, which is, you know,

it’s an integrative psychiatry clinic, we see–

we call them refugees from intravenous,

ketamine clinics or other formats where people are getting

ketamine without the psychological support.

The latest, you know, since COVID has been the suspension of

the Ryan Haid Act, which prevents people from providers from

prescribing controlled substances without seeing the person face

to face in person. So now we have a, you know, widespread

practice of online ketamine prescribing.

Not all of the online ketamine prescribing

is taking advantage of people.

I wanna say that, but people are using

these really powerful tools at home with no support,

which is kind of similar to going to an IV ketamine clinic

and being put in a dark room where somebody pulls a curtain,

but like in an emergency room environment

and there’s no person there.

There’s no prescriber there.

There’s no therapist there.

And people can get really blown out

because what happens when you take a psychedelic is,

and the term psychedelic means mind manifesting.

So what’s in your mind gets amplified.

And when you’re working with people with depression

and anxiety, then they’re gonna have things in their mind

that have happened to them in the past that get amplified.

And they may not even be told that that could happen

on ketamine. And all of a sudden they’re having a panic attack or, you know, they’re re-experiencing

in their body, an assault or a terrible experience that they had. And they don’t even know what’s

going on. It’s just terror. So that’s why we really believe and, you know, we teach in our

Institute that with these powerful tools, you need to have someone there with you to help you

navigate the journey and keep you anchored in your experience. Otherwise, you could get

get re-traumatized.

JANNINE: And that’s exactly what I’ve seen in my practice

when folks have gone, you know, not every time.

But I definitely don’t want to scare folks

that that’s what’s going to happen,

because it’s not always that case.

But what do you see as being kind of like,

how do you guys do it?

What do you recommend in terms of work up to actually having

ketamine?

And let’s talk about what kind of person

is a good fit for ketamine?

What kind of things might be they be experiencing?

And then how do you guys work at the integrative psychology

Institute, how are you going to do?

DR. WILL: Yeah, so ketamine–

E

from different classes, like maybe they took an SSRI,

maybe they took Whelputrin or SNRI,

and didn’t get anywhere.

These are the kind of people who often respond

really well to ketamine.

It’s not for everyone.

There are certain psychological and medical

rollouts that need to be looked at carefully

to make sure that it’s the right fit for that individual.

So we do an hour long assessment to make sure that it’s a good fit for people before they

come in and have their sessions.

And then we follow what seems to be the best evidence-based protocol to get the most long-lasting

benefits from ketamine therapy.

So it’s a persevere depression, treatment-resistant depression.

It’s twice a week for three weeks.

So six sessions in a very short timeframe.

And it’s pretty cool to see 80% of people go from severe depression to minimal depression

symptoms in three weeks, you know, when they’ve tried for years or longer to get well with

other methods.

JANNINE: Wow.

Wow.

That’s impressive.

That’s impressive.

I didn’t realize it was that high at 80% holy cow.

Holy cow.

Wow.

DR. WILL: It’s powerful, the biggest drawback with ketamine and it’s real and definitely needs to be talked

about as the durability of the benefits.

So this is where I think the holistic or integrative perspective is critical, where you’re taking

as you screen someone for the ketamine treatment, you’re also looking at, well, what is their

lab?

Are they sedentary?

Or do they have a C-reactive protein of 10?

you know, are they highly inflamed?

Do they have a big trauma history?

What is their diet like?

What is their relationship environment look like?

How’s their sleep?

So you’re looking at targets for lifestyle medicine that you’re going to

want to really get after as soon as the person is starting to feel some

relief from their depression.

And sticking to that game plan, I think, has a huge impact on, you could say,

you know, from an economic standpoint, what the return is on your investment for undergoing

ketamine treatment, because it’s typically not covered by insurance.

It’s a big outlay for a lot of people.

JANNINE: Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s it.

And that definitely is for a lot of people, a barrier and also why I will see some people

turning towards the psilocybins.

DR. WILL: Sure.

JANNINE: And finding, you know, the person around the street or as I call it, the psychedelic

tourism types of packages that they’ll find online. They’ll be like, I can go to Mexico and have

hand have a journey at the same time. I would love to get your take on

ketamine versus psilocybin’s what, you know, who would be for compared to someone that would be

better suited to ketamine. And then of course, I want to hear what you think about the psychedelic

tourism. 

DR. WILL: Well, so maybe we should start by talking about the medicines and how they’re different and

and the legal differences and so on at this point in time.

First of all, ketamine’s been around as an FDA approved

and aesthetic since the ’60s.

It is being used off label for mental health.

So it’s worth mentioning that generic ketamine,

IV ketamine is not FDA approved for depression,

but the level of evidence is so high

and the prevalence, the availability of it

is pretty high at this point.

There is an FDA approved version of ketamine called Spervato.

That’s a nasal spray.

But frankly, the effectiveness of Spervato is way less

than IV-cadamine for treatment-resistant depression.

So, the sirens different in that it remains on schedule one,

which means it’s a felony to possess it

or to distribute it and so on.

So, it’s important for people to realize

that that law hasn’t changed about psilocybin, even though on a state-by-state level we have

Oregon and now Colorado that have embraced psilocybin as an option for people with significant

depression.

So, things can be legal on a state level but illegal on a federal level, which marijuana,

you could say, is kind of a similar thing at this point in time.

So what’s exciting about psilocybin is that first of all, it’s been around for thousands

and thousands of years and indigenous use and not just in Mexico where it kind of hit

the press in the 1950s, but Siberia, South America, all over the world.

There are shamans who’ve been working with psilocybin.

So it’s considered to be from a physical standpoint, extraordinarily safe, very safe,

very difficult to overdose.

In fact, I don’t think there’s a single case report of someone dying from eating too much

psilocybin.

You can get into some really difficult psychological territory and you can have long lasting flashbacks

and psychological problems. Usually these problems resolve within a few weeks or months

if they occur as a side effect of psilocybin, but the psychological risks are real, even

if the medical is pretty safe with psilocybin. So people do leave the country if they live

in a state where they can’t access it legally. They, as you said, tourism with psychedelics

is a huge industry. The problem with that I see with these, and I’m just basing this on my work

with patients and having people come back from places in South America that they

maybe responded to, they made a reservation from like a Google ad or some kind of marketing

as opposed to my best, had a great experience. So now I can, like a word of mouth

close in referral, I think is way safer than just some kind of like flyer that you got in your mailbox kind of thing.

So having said that, I think the context of indigenous healing is a very, very different framework of even the idea of like what is actually wrong or what’s out of balance inside of you is a different conversation in a non-western language.

westernized, non-industrialized medical conversation.

So I tend to think about indigenous rituals of healing

with or without plant medicine as spiritual in nature.

Your connection with yourself, your connection with others,

your connection with mother nature,

are things that come in to focus often in these contexts.

And that can be incredibly powerful and beautiful

to have healing in those areas of your life.

But in terms of like going into directly

try to unravel the knot of trauma in your mind

or to directly address treatment resistant depression,

these are not frameworks or phenomena

that indigenous healers usually have much familiarity with

or that they may not even embrace that as a concept.

So, I think sometimes people go with psychological suffering and feeling aligned with and bought

into a Western framework of disease, let’s say, or illness, and they go and experience

a mismatch in the framework of what’s actually happening in these traditional ceremonies.

So the sophistication or the, that’s not the right word, the ability of an indigenous

healer and the background and training of an indigenous healer is not really relatable

to a person who’s coming in with, “Look, I have cream resistant depression as my condition

and I’m here to heal that.”

JANNINE: Right.

Right.

It’s such a different, and then we’ve got cultural language barriers too, and trying

to explain all of that.

Yeah, I can see for those folks who, you know, maybe it’s mild, you just want to explore

things, that might not be a bad thing.

But for those who really are suffering and have, you know, not found solutions, I am

very weary of those types of care.

Now, another thing that I’ve never talked about on the podcast is MDMA and where things

are legally with MDMA at this point and who might benefit from MDMA?

DR. WILL: Well, I’m glad you asked.

I have a long background in clinical research of MDMA therapy for trauma.

And so what IC is MDMA, I mean, when it becomes widely available, which I think it will, right

now it’s in phase three clinical trials that it came up for FDA consideration this past

summer of 2024.

FDA decided that more research was necessary before they consider approving it.

So it looks like another phase three trial is going to be necessary at this point.

But the efficacy, so the effectiveness and the safety is the evidence is excellent.

And what I mean by that is the trial that I was a part of here in Boulder, Colorado,

we treated people who on average had about 29 years of PTSD in their lives.

So very long-term chronic PTSD with oftentimes hundreds of hours of therapy, many different

medication trials.

So people who had tried and failed a lot of different attempts to get well.

And two-thirds of the folks who came through the protocol no longer met criteria for PTSD

at the end of the outcome of the study.

So these rates of recovery from PTSD are unheard of from ordinary currently approved

treatments.

And so that’s maybe in a nutshell why MDMA therapy is so exciting is that it offers in

a protocol where you only take MDMA three times and, you know, we could go into the detail

there, but protocols about five months long and you take you have an MDMA session once

month for three occasions only. And these are the folks who are, you know, at the two-month follow-up,

two-thirds no longer meeting criteria, and at the one-year follow-up even more than that not meeting

criteria for PTSD. So it seems to be a very long-lasting intervention that has profound impacts on a

person system. 

JANNINE: Wow. I definitely think about it for a lot of folks. And I think the biggest

thing is trying to connect with one of the research groups and your research is actively

happening. Are you involved in your research right now? 

DR. WILL: Not at the moment. Okay. Okay. But

I certainly keep my finger on the pulse and have a lot of friends who are still doing

that beautiful work, it’s long and it’s frustratingly long and sadly there are so many people

who are dying by suicide waiting for a more effective treatment to come around.

So it’s time for better treatment options to be available for people.

JANNINE: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Do you find that with MDMA, it’s well received in certain populations like men, women, veterans?

I’m just kind of looking at like what types of PTSD, if there’s a type of PTSD that it seems to

work better with, just questions I get from patients. 

DR. WILL: Great question. Well, you know, it’s

interesting. I had the same question going into doing the work in the clinical trials.

And I was wondering, you know, is combat PTSD more effectively treated than say

PTSD from a car accident or a sexual assault or or childhood PTSD and childhood trauma.

And it was very, very interesting to me that most of the people who I interacted with, who came

through our trial, came in with what we call an index trauma, which is a research term for like

like the reason why you have PTSD is because X happened to you.

And almost universally, when the MDMA kicked in

and in the dosing sessions,

people start to go back further into their history

and find out that there were a lot of things

that happened to them prior to the so-called index trauma

that created enough of an impact on who they were

that the way that they responded to the index trauma was different from how they might have

responded if they hadn’t had earlier trauma, which is maybe a long-winded way of saying that.

It seems like with MDMA, when the circumstances are right and the therapists are there and they’re

well-trained and it’s a quiet, safe environment, the person’s mind can relax enough that they can go

back in time to the earliest experiences they’ve had.

So we saw people working on multiple levels of trauma in their history, kind of floating

from early childhood back to the thing that supposedly brought them into the treatment

protocol and back and forth and working on multiple levels at the same time.

And so I didn’t come away thinking X, Y, or Z type of trauma was most suitable to MDMA

therapy.

I came away thinking that people can work on very deep material with MDMA or they can

work with very recent things that have happened to them.

I guess the only nuance I would share about that is it seems like the more layers or the

more early trauma a person is dealing with, it seems like the more sessions they need

to take care of it.

So someone who doesn’t have PTSD who gets into their 30s or 40s or 50s and they have

a terrible car accident and now they have PTSD, if their earlier life is relatively free

of traumatic experiences, then they might only need one session to work through that

material and put it behind them.

We saw people in the trial who felt after they took MDMA one time that they got all

the healing that they needed and left.

That happens.

But there are also people who I think are going to need more than what the research protocol

is allowing for of three sessions.

JANNINE: Makes sense. I mean, I think that’s important for anyone that’s listening right now,

and pondering like, well, how much time would I need? And of course, the investment is always

DR. WILL: Sure. 

JANNINE:  What people are looking at, especially the most experienced, obviously, I have is the

ketamine because it’s the accessible right at this point. And so, you know, I think it’s important to

really explain like it depends. It all depends on, you know, what, what your, your body’s opening up

to what you, you can physically handle. And, and this is where I also get another question. Maybe

you’ve also had this kind of question. A lot of folks are now starting to get into energy healing

and working on, you know, mindset and trying to, to work that level of, of things. And, and some

some folks are saying, well, I don’t want to try something else.

I want to just use the ability to change my mind and manifesting and things of that nature.

What would you say in terms of folks who are looking at that versus looking at the psychedelics?

How can maybe you integrate them?

How could you kind of think about the process of like, well, mindset work and brain rewiring?

That’s probably the word I’m actually going for.

How would that differ from psychedelic or would they be better put together or would one amplify

as I’m suspecting psychedelics would amplify the brain-rewiring process? But I think a lot of people

think in other and/or one or the other kind of terms.

DR. WILL: Well, I think there are more than, obviously, there’s more than one way to get well, you know,

And for people with chronic conditions, oftentimes there’s layers in different aspects that need

to be handled. It’s not just one thing that they’re going to need. For example, the phenomenon

of inflammation is really common in chronic depression. So things that reduce inflammation

can be really, really helpful for that person. They might also need mindset change. They might

might also need psychedelic therapy.

In the case of psilocybin or ketamine,

then they might be getting some of those things

all in one, right?

They’re getting an opening into their mind

that the chemical helps.

They’re getting mindset shifts from insights

and they might also be getting anti-inflammatory change

that’s happening directly from the drug.

I think that energy healing and mindset shifts

can be a really powerful, I mean, I’ve seen people

who tried and failed the conventional treatments

go to dynamic neural reprocessing training,

DNRS training, go to spiritual retreats,

go to energy healers in Brazil or different,

you don’t need to go to Brazil to find energy healing,

but there’s as many different kinds of ways

to get well that work as there are people, I think.

So I think it’s important to keep an open mind to that

and keep looking and not give up

when the things that are presented to you

or offered to you that sound like they’re gonna help you,

that you try, they don’t work.

It’s easy to get, to feel defeated and deflated

when things don’t go well in treatment.

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah, I definitely have felt being an empath.

I can feel it, right?

When folks don’t get better and things are shifting,

it’s hard, it is so hard

and trying to find the right thing

and what to invest in and who’s programmed to do.

And it becomes very difficult.

And this is where I love that you’re offering programs

for Doc’s naturopaths.

Guys, this is a big deal.

I’m very honored that he’s offering us naturopaths

into the club because not,

there’s no other program that accepts naturopaths

in that I’m aware of.

Even the MAPS program,

there was a little bit of glitches

in that system too for us.

And so I’m very excited that you’re offering training

for docs and nurse practitioners and pretty much,

it sounds like anybody that’s in the medical field

that can work with mental health conditions and issues.

DR. WILL: Right, we’re training licensed clinicians,

mostly across the board.

But we wanna make sure that people have enough

of a mental health background.

And I don’t worry as much about naturopathic doctors

as I would be worried about, say, an anesthesiologist

who has zero training and how to sit with people

with mental health concerns or challenges.

In primary care, of course,

I think the rate I saw in one study was 80%

of the challenges people are facing, they come in.

I say primary care, I mean naturopaths

and you know, allopathic physicians,

you’re dealing with mental health all day long.

So, you know, if you don’t have tools,

you’re gonna be burnt out pretty quickly.

And that’s real.

I mean, with the level of suffering

that’s happening in the world right now,

we see a lot of practitioners come into our programs

with high levels of burnout.

JANNINE: You know, that’s a very interesting thing

that you bring up because I noticed in somewhere

you were talking about medical providers,

most embrace their own healing journeys.

DR. WILL: Yeah.

JANNINE: To really fully step into our ability to help folks.

And this is something that even as a naturopath,

I didn’t grasp it fully,

’cause I think last year at the time

was trying to really educate us on being very close to Western.

So we kind of fit in a little bit more.

So I kind of look at it as,

I don’t think I fully realized

that I had to take care of the mental health for me too.

‘Cause boy, yeah, burnout is real.

It is real in our field.

And kind of, I think even more now,

since COVID, I just really have seen so many fellow

doc friends of mine being like, I’m quitting,

I’m done, forget this.

DR. WILL: Yeah, and there’s so many reasons

that people are feeling bad as practitioners.

I mean, documentation, pre-authorizations

and dealing with insurance, having to see 20 or 40 people

a day in primary care to make ends meet,

I mean, the student loans, I mean, the list goes on

on and on. It’s really stressful and it’s particularly stressful for healers to not see results in

the things that you’re doing. You mentioned earlier feeling discouraged, I think, that kind of feeling

of like, “Is this something about me as a practitioner that I’m not able to accomplish what I’m trying

trying to do with people now, it’s like we aren’t given complete information in terms

of the wide range of different ways people can get well and what to offer people at the

right time and the right place.

Coming into a learning community can be a huge leg up in terms of realizing that you’re

not alone in the suffering that you’re experiencing.

To be a healer means to take pride in your work and your ability to get results with

people and feel good about those outcomes.

If our tools are limited, I mean, I told my story earlier about quitting psychiatry because

I just was so discouraged.

I’m actually, that whole vibe has really flipped around in my mind as I’ve seen the

the results that these new tools can offer people.

The prospect of helping someone who’s been

under the wheel of symptoms for decades,

put mental health care behind them is pretty exciting.

JANNINE: Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely what I’m looking for here.

Now, of course, with your training for folks,

I think it’s important to share with the audience

kind of how would they find,

So if they’re looking, obviously,

you have a practitioner list, but I’m also thinking,

if someone’s looking to work with the Ketamine Clinic

and we’re looking to get in some,

a group for some MDMA research,

where are, what are some of the key components to look for

in terms of the practitioners or the clinic

or the facility, what kind of things are highly recommended

in your opinion that someone wants to be looking for

to be sure that like, okay, this is a solid place.

And I’m probably talking a little more towards ketamine

because MDMA is more controlled.

DR. WILL: Right, so the clinical trials you mentioned,

well, cover MDMA first and then go to ketamine.

The organization you mentioned before MAPS

was the sponsor of this research on MDMA for PTSD.

So getting on their newsletter is a great place to start

in terms of keeping track of opportunities

to join clinical trials, that’s maps.org

is pretty straightforward, MAPS.

And the company,

so maps started a pharmaceutical company

that lives underneath the nonprofit maps

and it’s called Lycos.

So Lycos is now the organizations

that’s holding that phase three research on MDMA.

So those are good places to look for that.

With, as far as vetting out,

Academy and clinics,

I think the main thing is making sure

that there’s someone on staff who has a good foundation

in working with depression and PTSD.

So someone with licensure in the mental health field.

It doesn’t mean that the owner

or the medical director needs to be a therapist

or a psychiatrist, but if that provider,

that owner is an ER doc or they’re an anesthesiologist,

which is commonly the case.

If they’re the only person there

and they don’t have a therapist or a psychiatrist

or someone with a really solid mental health training

background, then I think you’re gonna be at higher risk

of having an experience like I talked about earlier

where you are given IV ketamine in a dark room

and you kind of fend for yourself.

So there’s a professional organization

of ketamine providers, called the American Society of Ketamine Practitioners, ASKP.

You can find out about members over there.

Our practitioner list is a good place to look to.

We have hundreds of people that we’ve trained in ketamine therapy, and we beat the drum pretty

hard about including the mental health component, the therapy component with the ketamine.

So I think you’re unlikely to find a provider who isn’t going to round out the approach

on our website, which is psychiatryinstitute.com.

JANNINE: Makes sense.

Makes sense.

I mean, ultimately, my biggest concern is safety and getting results and making sure

if folks are going to put the effort into spending the money on ketamine or spending

the money even on a pscillicibyn type of journey, I’m hoping that there’s going to be some lead-up

and follow-up afterwards to be. 

DR. WILL: Absolutely. That’s critical to be well prepared and to have

plenty of time to integrate the insights that you developed on your journey.

Really important. 

JANNINE: crucial. Well, I am so glad you’re doing what you’re doing.

And I’m just like I said before, I’m so glad you’re letting the natural past come and have

some training too because I think it’s very important for everyone to have a chance to

be able to help their patients on the deepest level they possibly can.

So of course, let’s go back to you briefly mentioned your website.

I know you’re on social media too.

I want folks to be able to get access to you guys at the integrative psychiatry institute

and just learn more and be able to it.

If they’re in Boulder, I guess my other question is, is if they’re in Boulder, can they pop

in and see you guys and consult with you?

DR. WILL: I mean, people who are Boulder can give us a call.

They can reach out to us through our website.

They can email us that way.

the easiest way to get a hold of us. So, you know, they can look us up in Google and find

our phone number for our clinic. The easiest way to sort of connect with us and hear more

about what we’re up to is by listening to our podcast, which is the higher practice podcast.

It’s on all the platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. And just going to our website

in looking around and seeing reading our blogs and you can find our podcast there too. It’s

called psychiatryinstitute.com. So not easy to spell, but pretty simple to say. And yeah,

we were our our mission here is to bend this hockey stick that we’re seeing in mental health

globally and make a change by helping providers gain access to better tools.

JANNINE: Absolutely. I think that that is going to make a world of difference and I’m so glad that you’re

doing it. I look forward to listening to the Higher Practice podcast folks. Check that out as

well. Good stuff there. I checked out some of your topics and all good stuff, stuff I get

questions on all the time. I think it’s going to be great for you guys, especially if you guys

are definitely wondering more about the world of psychedelics and how that might fit, be

a fit for you.

Dr. Will, thank you so much for coming on.

DR. WILL: Thanks, Janine.

It’s been great to be here.

Really appreciate it.

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