On 1 Feb the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) announced that - from the 1st July 2023 - the medical use of MDMA and Psilocybin will be rescheduled from Schedule 9 (prohibited substances) to Schedule 8 (controlled medicines) of the Poisons Standard. This will enable authorised psychiatrists to prescribe these substances for treatment-resistant depression and treatment resistant post-traumatic stress disorder.

Today we speak with Peter Hunt who is not your conventional mental health practitioner. Peter is in fact a career investment banker with 35 years of experience as a banker. He has advised local and multi-national companies and governments in Australia.  The reason why we’re speaking with Peter is also an active philanthropist involved in funding, developing and scaling social sector organisations with the goal to create a better and fairer world. 

Specifically, Peter is the Chairman of Mind Medicine Australia which he established with his wife, Tania de Jong, in 2018. Mind Medicine Australia supports clinical research and works towards regulatory-approved and evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies.

In our conversation today we explore a course that Mind Medicine Australia has developed to help train the next generation of clinicians. Peter shares his views on the applications of MDMA and psychedelic assisted therapy as well as some of his own personal journey.

You can connect with Mind Medicine Australia via their website mindmedicineaustralia.org.au

Dr Stephen Bright is a clinically trained psychologist and senior lecturer on addiction at Edith Cowan University. Dr. Bright is the director of PRISM, the Psychedelic Research in Science and Medicine organisation which is a not for profit, independent research charity developing medical and legal processes for the application of psychedelic medicines for improved well being in Australia.

In this conversation Dr. Stephen shares an update on the research for MDMA and psylicybin in the US and Australia, some of the results of the studies, the reactions from the clinical community, regulators and the public as well as Dr. Bright’s view on how psychedelic assisted therapy will come to play a role in clinical practice.

Some websites we discussed:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ is the platform to find out which studies are running

https://www.prism.org.au/prismsresearch/ is a summary of research and PRISM’s website

You can connect with Dr. Bright here: s.bright@ecu.edu.au

The drug-harm chart by Prof David Nutt has been summarised well here:

https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-drugs-that-cause-the-most-harm-2013-9

The original paper from Prof David Nutt was published in the Lancet and can be found here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47635105_Nutt_DJ_King_LA_Phillips_LD_Drug_harms_in_the_UK_a_multicriteria_decision_analysis_Lancet_376_1558-1565

Today we’re speaking with Dr. Tracey Sletten, a senior research fellow from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University.

Dr. Sletten is an expert on sleep and in our conversation we do a deep dive into how shift work affects sleep and how to improve sleep as much as possible while still working as a shift worker.

If you’d like to connect with Dr. Tracey or her team you can do so via tracey.sletten@monash.edu or on twitter @tracey_sletten