Applying Key Lessons from the Hospice and Palliative Care Movement to Inform Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy.

Background: Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) has re-emerged as a promising intervention for addressing mental health conditions and existential concerns. Despite growing enthusiasm, PAT may be difficult to integrate into mainstream health systems. The rich sacramental traditions of psychedelics, their centering of the human experience, proposed substrates of action, context-dependent outcomes, and highly relational method of therapy all challenge dominant reductionistic approaches of the biomedical model. Hospice and palliative care are well established as holistic evidence-based standards of care, yet they began as a radical grassroots movement. Hospice and palliative care models may offer unique insights to support the growing field of PAT. Purpose: The intention of this commentary is to articulate the deep synergies between hospice and palliative care and PAT, with the intention of fostering interdisciplinary dialogue that may aid in implementation of human-centered high-quality PAT. Conclusions: Various aspects of hospice and palliative care models were identified and explored, which may support the implementation of human-centered high-quality PAT at scale. These include a focus on truly interdisciplinary care, applying a holistic lens to health and illness, bearing witness to suffering and healing, customized care, centering human relationships, decentralized models of care, generalist/specialist competencies, fostering spirituality, organizing as a social moment around shared goals, and growth from grassroots community organizations to mature care systems. Although hospice and palliative care can offer practical lessons for scaling human-centered experiential therapies, PAT, with its radical centering of meaning-making and relationship in the healing process, may also mutually innovate the fields of hospice and palliative care.

Spiritual Care as a Core Component of Palliative Nursing.

ABSTRACT: Spirituality is one aspect of the human experience that is unique to each person and may become especially important in the face of life-threatening illness. While evidence supports the need to address spirituality as part of holistic palliative care nursing, it is hoped that "spiritual care" will not become another item on nurses' to-do list, but rather will be part of nurses' everyday lives and nursing practice. Taking time to assess personal needs, and consciously connecting to meaning, hope, and peace, can support nurses' return to the deeper roots of nursing. Addressing spirituality as part of palliative nursing care can also acknowledge the complex and multidimensional experiences of the patients that nurses serve. Connecting, or reconnecting, with nurses' unique sense of spirituality can serve as a powerful resource for resilience. This article highlights the relevance of spiritual care to palliative nursing and offers practical tips to incorporate spiritual care into everyday nursing practice.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy in the Context of Serious Illness.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is a burgeoning treatment with growing interest across a variety of settings and disciplines. Empirical evidence supports PAT as a novel therapeutic approach that provides safe and effective treatment for people suffering from a variety of diagnoses, including treatment-resistant depression, substance use disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Within the palliative care (PC) field, one-time PAT dosing may lead to sustained reductions in anxiety, depression, and demoralization-symptoms that diminish the quality of life in both seriously ill patients and those at end of life. Despite a well-noted psychedelic renaissance in scholarship and a renewed public interest in the utilization of these medicines, serious illness-specific content to guide PAT applications in hospice and PC clinical settings has been limited. This article offers 10 evidence-informed tips for PC clinicians synthesized through consultation with interdisciplinary and international leading experts in the field with aims to: (1) familiarize PC clinicians and teams with PAT; (2) identify the unique challenges pertaining to this intervention given the current legalities and logistical barriers; (3) discuss therapeutic competencies and considerations for current and future PAT use in PC; and (4) highlight critical approaches to optimize the safety and potential benefits of PAT among patients with serious illness and their caregivers.