This Introductory Workshop for Psychedelic Therapies will run in November 2021. This will be a first-of-its-kind opportunity in Australia for those wanting to gain direct insight and training into this approach from international therapists in the field.
This workshop will be facilitated by leading Psychotherapist and Founder of the UK TRIPP Network Maria Papaspyrou (UK) and more TBA.
The workshop will introduce participants to various approaches in psychedelic treatment for mental illness.
This workshop is open to anyone with an interest in the topic and who is considering further development of their current therapeutic skills. It is particularly for those who are aiming to work in this field as and when these therapies become legally available in Australia.
It will cover an introductory background history to psychedelic medicines, how they work and how they are applied in research and clinical settings. There will be a significant practical component focussing on integration of experiences – how to understand and use the kinds of experience commonly encountered when using these substances for better self-understanding and how trained therapists might help someone apply them in their own lives.
While not providing a qualification of any kind, attendees can obtain non-accredited Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certificates (related to your professional registration) for attending.
The workshop will also provide a taster for the contents of the longer Professional Development Program for clinicians and trained therapists due to commence early in 2021. These workshops are an opportunity to ‘test the waters’ for those interested in training up as certified medicine-assisted therapists. When this treatment receives regulatory approval in Australia, there will be demand for clinicians trained in the safe and effective provision of medicine-assisted therapy.
Please note that the introductory workshop is not a prerequisite for anyone wishing to go on to apply for the full course, and unfortunately cannot guarantee acceptance. The longer training will include teaching by internationally recognised leaders in the field and will follow the highest standards for recognised medicine-assisted psychotherapy training.
Medicine-assisted therapy is not yet legal in Australia, outside of a research context. However, given the impressive early clinical evidence to date, and the near-term regulatory changes predicted in the US and EU subject to forthcoming data, these workshops will contribute to preparing the Australia context for regulatory changes in the coming years.
The workshops will cover all three phases of medicine-assisted therapy: preparation, medicine session, and integration. Workshops will incorporate the theoretical (neuroscience, psychology, psychotherapy), practical (instruction in methods of service provision), and experiential elements of treatment (process learning that deepens and develops clinicians’ capacity).
The Presenters
Maria Papaspyrou (UK)
Psychotherapist and writer, Founder TRIPP Network UK
Maria Papaspyrou is an integrative psychotherapist and systemic family constellations facilitator in private practice in Brighton, UK. She has almost twenty years of clinical experience and has worked in the fields of trauma, mental health, student counselling and psychedelic integration.
In the last seven years she has given talks and published articles on the sacramental and healing properties of entheogens, supporting their re-introduction in psychotherapy and is currently co-editing an upcoming anthology on psychedelic psychotherapy and integration. Wanting to promote this work within the psychotherapeutic profession she actively supports the development of psychedelic integration as a field of specialism and has founded TRIPP Network, a U.K. based psychedelic psychotherapy integration database and continuous professional development training forum.
Her more conceptual work focuses on the intersecions between feminine and altered states of consciousness and their capacity to re-awaken our collective ecological consciousness. She has co-edited the book “Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine”.