PT441 – General Stephen Xenakis – The American Psychedelic Practitioners Association and the Mission to Integrate Psychedelics into U.S. Healthcare

<p>In this episode, Kyle interviews General Stephen Xenakis, MD: an adult, child, and adolescent psychiatrist who retired from the U.S. Army in 1998 at the rank of Brigadier General and began a career starting up medical technology companies and clinical practice to support human rights and new methodologies of healthcare. </p> <p>In June, he became the new Executive Director of the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association (APPA), whose mission is to bring practitioners together as a community; develop the best training programs and practices; shift to a more patient-centered, integrated model of care; eventually accredit practitioners to practice with legal substances; and overall, help to make these new modalities more mainstream. </p> <p>He discusses their path to success, which began with their publishing of the first professional practice guidelines for psychedelic-assisted therapy practitioners, and will continue on with ethical guidelines and clinical practice guidelines in the future. And he talks about the idea of a safety net for people who have adverse effects from psychedelic journeys; what clinicians need to know about psychedelics; concerns over accessibility; and the importance of identifying the correct treatments for the correct patients, as each person’s path to healing will likely be drastically different.<br /> <br /> <a href= "https://psychedelicstoday.com/2023/09/12/pt441-general-stephen-xenakis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here to head to the show notes page</a>. </p>