On September 19, 2024, APA’s Senior Director of Evidence Based Practice and Health Equity Raquel Halfond, PhD, participated in a roundtable to discuss psychedelics hosted by the Democrat members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee (HVAC). Participants included representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Rand Corporation, Compass Pathways Biotechnology Company and APA. HVAC Ranking Member Mark Takano (D–California-39), HVAC Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Julia Brownley (D–California-26), and committee member Morgan McGarvey (D–Kentucky-03) all attended and engaged in the discussion.
Halfond’s remarks raised three critical issues regarding the future use of psychedelics in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She first highlighted existing effective treatments for PTSD, dispelling myths of current limits and availability of such treatment. This presented an opportunity to discuss APA’s process of developing and updating clinical practice guidelines. Halfond next focused on the need for rigorous, quality, and nonbiased research and identified a myriad of issues for study yet to be addressed, such as long-term effects of use and population specific study and efficacy. Third, she spoke on the importance of associated psychotherapy and the study of care delivery models, while praising the VA’s commitment to research and the delivery of a gold standard of care. More broadly, she shared concern about the resource intensive nature of administering psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and encouraged future funding that can keep pace with cost of care so not to be resource divergent from current effective treatments, especially considering recent VA budget shortfalls.
Halfond’s remarks were informed by recent efforts of APA’s clinical practice guideline panel of experts, including psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing, and patient members, to update APA’s 2017 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Treatment of PTSD in Adults. This updated guideline draft was released on September 20 for public commentopens in new window. This panel also informed a recent letter to the Food and Drug Administration regarding MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (PDF, 184KB)opens in new window, which noted that there is insufficient evidence at this time for the panel to be able to recommend MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for patients with PTSD.
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