Psychedelic Drug Treatments for Psychiatric Disorders – All You Need to Know!

Dr. Eli Kotler has been on the forefront of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) both in Australia and internationally, currently working at The Journey Clinic. He is the Australian Director of the Certificate of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (CPAT), run by Mind Medicine Australia. In 2021 he challenged the Victorian government in court to allow a patient to access PAT, and was the first psychiatrist in Australia to treat a patient with PAT.

Dr. Kotler is also an experienced psychodynamic therapist. He was the Medical Director of Malvern Private Hospital for many years, a trauma and addiction hospital in Melbourne. He has been invited as a keynote speaker on PAT, trauma and addiction, both internationally and nationally, for leading organisations such as the RANZCP and the IPA. Eli has also been an advisor for the Australian government for reviewing addiction guidelines, and has had extensive research experience in novel neuropsychiatric therapies.

Dr. Kotler has been involved with medical student teaching, psychiatric registrar training, and teaching other psychiatrists about PAT and trauma. He is a preferred provider for the AFL players association, has been an expert witness in over 100 historical abuse legal cases, and served on the Victorian Medical Panels for several years.

In his role as Executive officer of Mind Medicine Australia Scott leads the organisation’s Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training & Education program, including its leading Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies program and he worked on the strategy and implementation of MMA’s successful advocacy initiative to reschedule MDMA and psilocybin.

He has been working in adult education for over 15 years, designing and implementing programs in the music and healthcare fields. In addition, he is a somatic facilitator and breathwork practitioner, working with a variety of techniques to support and integrate expanded states of awareness for therapeutic outcomes.

As an investment banker Peter Hunt AM advised local and multi-national companies and governments in Australia for nearly 35 years.  He co-founded one of Australia’s leading investment banking advisory firms, Caliburn Partnership and was Executive Chairman of Greenhill Australia. Peter was a member of the Advisory Panel of ASIC and chaired the Vincent Fairfax Family Office.

Peter is an active philanthropist involved in funding, developing and scaling social sector organisations which seek to create a better and fairer world.  He is Chairman of Mind Medicine Australia which he established with his wife, Tania de Jong, in 2018. He regularly presents to Governments, regulators, clinicians, philanthropists and the general public on psychedelic-assisted therapies and the legal and ethical frameworks needed to ensure these treatments can be made accessible and affordable. He was the lead author of Mind Medicine Australia’s successful rescheduling applications for MDMA and psilocybin, which made Australia the first country in the world to reschedule these medicines.

He founded Women’s Community Shelters in 2011. Peter is a Director of The Umbrella Foundation. Peter also acts as a pro bono adviser to Creativity Australia.  He was formerly Chairman of So They Can, Grameen Australia and Grameen Australia Philippines.

Peter was made a member of the General Division of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2010 for services to the philanthropic sector.

Anthony Korner, PhD, is a clinical senior lecturer in psychiatry at Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney.

Anthony Korner works in Sydney as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, practising in both public and private settings. He is the Coordinator for the Master of Medicine (Psychotherapy) Program at the University of Sydney and is active in teaching, research, and clinical practice. His research interests include psychodynamic psychotherapy, linguistics, and philosophy. He has published approximately thirty papers in journals and books. He is a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council Committee, which is developing a guideline for the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. He is the Australian representative on the World Council for Psychotherapy and was chairman of the organising committee for the 6th World Congress for Psychotherapy, held in Sydney in 2011.

He lives with his wife in Sydney and has worked as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist for over 30 years. He has also completed a PhD in linguistics. He has interests in theatre, music, philosophy and time with family.

Professor Pat McGorry AO is a psychiatrist known worldwide for his development and scaling up of early intervention and youth mental health services and for mental health innovation, advocacy and reform.

He is Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and the founding editor of the journal Early Intervention in Psychiatry.

He led the advocacy which resulted in the establishment by the Australian Government in 2005 of the National Youth Mental Health Foundation, which in 2006 became Headspace and he remains a founding board member of that organisation.

He has played a key advocacy and advisory role to government and health system reform in Australia and in many parts of the world.

He chaired the Expert Advisory Committee of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

He has published over 1000 publications, with 51,822 citations and a “h” index of 119 (Scopus).

He is President of the International Association for Youth Mental Health, Past-President of the Schizophrenia International Research Society, Past-President of the Society for Mental Health Research, and was Founding President and is now Treasurer of the IEPA: Early Intervention in Mental Health.

In 2010 Professor McGorry was selected as Australian of the Year and became an Officer of the Order of Australia.

In 2013 he received the Annual Research Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Washington DC and in 2015 was awarded the Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research by the US-based Brain and Behaviour Foundation.

In 2016 he became the first psychiatrist to be elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

In 2018 he received the Schizophrenia International Research Society Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2019 the Humanitarian Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the NHMRC Research Excellence Award.