Preparing Psychedelic Therapy Training: A New-Joiner’s Experience of Clerkenwell Health
Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Zofia, and I joined Clerkenwell Health two months ago to help with the Psychedelic Practitioner Training Programmes, a two-course series designed to educate mental health professionals to effectively and safely deliver psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Having worked in venture capital, I connected with Clerkenwell Health through their investor, and immediately felt a pull towards the company. It was the first ever company for which I turned on post notifications because of how much I wanted to stay up to date.
When I saw that Clerkenwell Health was launching training programmes, my thoughts immediately turned to the myriad companies I’ve analysed during my venture capital days. It became evident to me that given their core focus on psychedelic clinical trials, they are uniquely positioned to excel in delivering such courses.
I wrote an email to the company's CFO, Sam, with some marketing ideas. Fast-forward one month, I got offered a position to help Dr. Iain Jordan, our Clinical Director, to shape and develop these programmes. Iain and I now form the core of this small but dynamic department, with invaluable support from our other colleagues.
Turns out that my gut feeling was right because my experience at Clerkenwell Health has been nothing short of amazing. Starting with my colleagues, on the first day, Arda, who leads marketing efforts at the company, gave me a more enthusiastic welcome over a video call than any co-worker ever gave me in real life. Iain sent me self-made memes about our training programme. When I walked into the office, our CEO, Tom, suggested a get-to-know coffee within the first 10 seconds.
I love my role for the sense of purpose that I feel, creating a training programme that contributes to improving patient outcomes. No day is the same. Iain told me this was a once-in-a-lifetime team before we began, and I quickly understood why.
I sat down with Iain to get to know him better and the training programmes he's been driving forward.
Hi Iain, before I get to the questions, could you introduce yourself to the readers?
Sure. My name is Iain Jordan, I’m the Clinical Director of Clerkenwell Health, and a psychiatrist and therapist by training. I was an NHS consultant in Oxford for the past 10 years. I left the NHS about 18 months ago to explore alternative ways to help people beyond what I felt I was able to do in traditional mental health services. That’s what brought me to Clerkenwell Health because I loved what they’re doing.
And what is your role in terms of developing the training programmes?
I took over from my colleague, Sarah Bateup, who developed the first iteration of the training programme, and we shifted focus to a broader, more transdiagnostic and transtheoretical focus. We are now developing the Foundations Training Programme, as the philosophical and scientific background to the subsequent Certificate Programme.
You touched on this a bit, but could you provide an overview of the programmes?
About a year ago, we identified that there were certain things that existing training programs weren't addressing. Most programmes typically either addressed a particular therapeutic background or were not based on evidence-based therapy. Because we don't know what the situation is going to look like in a year or two, we thought we’d start from basics. We want to set people up so that when we do start to understand more about these compounds, that people have the groundwork.
The second thing was that there was not very much of a focus on risks, harms, and abuses that have happened in psychedelic treatments. If, for better or worse, these are going to be medicalised treatments, they need to be treated as such. There are many unknowns in the science of mental ill health and the strands running through all of that, such as what are the limitations? What are the mechanisms? What does the future look like? We want to call out these challenges and potentials for harms explicitly, instead of pretending that they don’t exist.
What’s the best part about building the programmes?
The best part? Can I say more than one?
Yes!
Okay. The best parts are, number one, it’s so stimulating and interesting to design and develop a curriculum that draws on such a diverse range of academic backgrounds. Whether it's complexity science, or sociology, or psychodynamic psychotherapy, or cognitive behavioural therapy, or physiology, the journey of trying to fit all these different pieces together into the different explanatory levels that we can use to understand mental ill health and recovery. I'm really excited for our learners, to experience that and get their feedback, and to continually improve the course. So that's been really fun.
The second thing is the enthusiasm that we've had from people we've approached with our vision, the gaps we want to fill, and the breadth and scale of the training. It has just been really heartening. Loads of amazing people who said “yes, that's exactly what we need, that’s what’s missing”. And everyone we’ve approached said “yes, I want to be part of it”. So yeah, those two things.
What’s the hardest thing about being the Director of the Programme?
The hardest thing I think is synthesizing a broad range of topics and fields in a way that is relevant and engaging to people. I'm constantly trying to think, what does the learner need to know, what would they be interested in knowing, and what puts them in the best place to be an informed and engaged therapist, or nurse, or doctor. That's really hard, and I suspect that I'm going to get some of it wrong, and so I'm looking for feedback because that's really where you learn, because I can only see it through my own eyes and through the eyes of our advisors and our wonderful team. So, I think we'll learn a lot once people start going through the programme.
And if somebody was currently deciding between psychedelic practitioner trainings, what would you tell them about our own programme to help them choose?
Yeah, there are around 200 programs out there. I think it very much depends on what you're looking for.
If you're looking for breadth and depth on the cutting edge of how we think about mental disorders, and for a background that will put you in the best place to be a great practitioner, and if you're looking for a clear, frank, and bias-free look at the reality of what the evidence shows and what the promise is, and where these treatments will fit into the broader treatment landscape, then this is the course for you. We've also made sure to incorporate the wisdom and evidence from many different fields.
Do you think it helped that Clerkenwell Health was designing and conducting clinical trials for the last several years?
Yes, without a doubt. We have multiple psychedelic trials going on at the moment, and I think the experience that we've had both designing protocols and delivering trials is invaluable. And, the experience that we have from our practitioner community, we've learned a lot from both from them. And, we've learned an enormous amount from participants who give us constructive and great feedback, and I think there's no replacement for that knowledge. We also have clinicians with experience in loads of other fields as well.
So, the combination of deep professional experience in various aspects of medicine and therapy and research among our lecturers, therapists, and doctors, combined with running trials, it’s hard to beat.
Thank you! That was great.
