Lynn Marie Morski, MD, Esq, on Psychedelics Education for Providers

Psychedelic Medicine Association president Lynn Marie Morski, MD, Esq, a Sana Symposium steering committee member, discusses the mission of the Psychedelic Medicine Association, bringing psychedelics education to front-line providers who are receiving inquiries from curious patients, and what PMA members can expect to learn at the Sana Symposium.

Read the transcript:

Doug Edwards:  Hello, I'm Doug Edwards, director of the Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Learning Network. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, president of the Psychedelic Medicine Association.

Dr. Morski is a Mayo Clinic trained physician, attorney, and former adjunct law professor and is on the steering committee of the Sana Symposium. Dr. Morski, thank you for joining us. I'm delighted you can spend a few minutes with us today.

Dr Lynn Marie Morski:  Thanks so much for having me, Doug. I appreciate it.

Edwards:  You're welcome. Tell us, what is the Psychedelic Medicine Association?

Dr Morski:  The Psychedelic Medicine Association is a group whose mission is to educate frontline healthcare providers on currently available and soon to be upcoming psychedelic therapies.

As these therapies become available, there's no way that they're going to get to patients unless those frontline providers know that they exist and feel comfortable discussing them with their patients. That's the role we're filling.

Edwards:  What kind of members do you have in the PMA right now?

Dr. Morski:  The PMA has members all the way from students who are new to the healthcare field through those in residency and fellowship, and then we've got providers from social workers, to psychiatrists, to counselors, primary care physicians. We've got some cardiologists and anesthesiologists in there, too.

Anybody who's frontline on when some patient comes forward and says, "I'm having this issue," we want them to feel welcome to come into the Psychedelic Medicine Association and learn to have a more broad conversation about the therapy options for those patients.

Edwards:  This is very timely, in the sense that we, at the Learning Network, did a survey in January of our broad reach. We discovered that half of our respondents said that patients were starting to ask about psychedelics.

It's so useful that you're starting to bring this education to the frontline people who ultimately are getting these patient requests for more information.

Dr. Morski: We're happy that that many patients are asking, and then we're also thinking about the patients who don't know. We want the doctors and the frontline providers to say, "Hey, look, there are these new options out here for something that you may have already tried some therapies and they may not work. Psychedelics may provide a whole another avenue for them."

Edwards:  What are your goals, in terms of educating clinicians and other stakeholders? What's PMA trying to accomplish here?

Dr. Morski:  We're trying to make sure that, like I said, whenever a patient goes to their clinician and says, "I'm having this problem," maybe it's anxiety, depression, or as we're getting into even more physical health problems, we want their provider to say, "Look, here's the options. Here's the traditional options that you might have heard of, but now we have this other range of options."

We want to have them feel comfortable having that discussion with the patients about the psychedelic therapies that are out there so that not only the physicians feel more comfortable, but the patients are getting a much broader range of options for things that have been difficult to treat in the past.

Edwards:  I think we're going to be hearing more and more over time about so much research going on that the next 5, 10 years, there's going to be an explosion of diagnoses in which psychedelics may be useful.

The PMA has decided that the Sana Symposium is its official meeting. I'm curious, what can PMA members and others, what can they learn from the Sana Symposium? What are you looking forward to at the conference?

Dr. Morski: I'm looking forward to obviously learning the latest in psychedelic science, but as you said, I'm looking forward to hearing all the new avenues of research into things like dementia, and OCD, and, like I said, more physical things. We're hearing about cluster headaches, etc., things that have been hard to treat in the past.

I'm looking forward and I know that the other PMA members are looking forward to learning that kind of thing. I also feel as though psychiatrists and therapists are going to come away with a lot of help, because so many therapies that we have right now are not that effective.

It's been frustrating, I'm sure, to treat patients who they come up with things and they are eventually labeled treatment-resistant. Psychedelics can help a lot of those conditions.

Hopefully, those providers, and therefore their patients, are going to have a lot more hope after this symposium.

Edwards:  Great. I'm looking forward to it in September. Dr. Morski, if someone wants to join PMA or learn more about the association, where should they go to online?

Dr. Morski:  You can head over to psychedelicmedicineassociation.org. We have individual members, like I said, clinicians, from students all the way up to those who are practicing.

To help us in our educational mission but also in our patient access mission, we've got all other kinds of organizations from the psychedelic world that are responsible for research or legislation. Those kinds of organizations can head over to psychedelicmedicineassociation.org as well and join.

Edwards:  Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Morski. Ladies and gentlemen, as we were discussing, I hope you can join Dr. Morski and myself to learn more about the latest in psychedelic research and treatment strategies from mental health and addiction professionals at the inaugural Sana Symposium.

It's a virtual event taking place September 17th through the 18th from the same team that brings you Psych Congress, the Evolution of Psychotherapy, and the National Conferences on Addiction Disorders. Be sure to visit sanasymposium.com to learn more and to register.