Speaker Bio
Dr. Julia King Olivier earned her MD degree in 2000 from the University of Geneva Medical School. Following her four-year residency in Internal Medicine at the University Hospital of Geneva, she chose to specialize in Psychiatry. She earned two Swiss FMH certifications in Adult Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Adolescent/Child Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. In 2021, she obtained a Certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Julia founded the Compassionate Care Center in Geneva where Swiss residents can receive legal psychedelic assisted therapy in compliance with the compassionate use criteria of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. Julia actively contributes towards the education and training of professionals in her field. She co-wrote and co-facilitated a course titled "Poetry, Symbol, & Story for Psychedelic Assisted Therapy » for the Fluence training platform. After earning the five-part MAPS certification in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in 2022, she completed the didactic portion of the MAPS PBC (Lykos) Consultation Training. In 2023, she served as a program assistant during the MAPS Pan Nordic training in Iceland and at Monash University in Melbourne. Additionally, she has joined the faculty at Mind Medicine Australia, supporting the historic implementation of psychedelic-assisted therapy on a large scale. In the fall of 2024, she will join the CIIS-CPTR program as a mentor.
ICPR 2024 Abstract
How to deal with the unavailability of legal psychedelic assisted therapy in Europe.
The ‘Psychedelics in Psychiatry Platform’ of the Dutch Psychiatric Association (‘Nederlandse Vereniging voor Psychiatrie, NVvP’) was founded in 2023, to provide a forum for discussion and information within Dutch psychiatry. With this panel discussion the Platform is introduced to the ICPR and contributes with a debate regarding the following.
Currently, the FDA is reviewing the New Drug Application for 'MDMA-assisted psychotherapy', with a potential approval in the US by 2024. In Australia, certified psychiatrists can prescribe MDMA and psilocybin under stringent conditions. However, MDMA therapy may only be registered in Europe years after the US. Psilocybin treatment still requires phase III studies before any application for registration will be filed. This disparity may result in large discrepancies between public expectations, amplified by media, and actual legal accessibility of these treatments. The resulting uncertainty can confuse and frustrate patients that may seek treatment outside regular mental healthcare. Healthcare providers may increasingly face dilemmas, as, for example, psilocybin truffles are legally obtainable in the Netherlands.
This interdisciplinary panel aims to discuss how European psychiatrists and other mental health care workers can approach the absence of formal prescription opportunities in the context of the sometimes over-idealized therapeutic potential of psychedelics, by addressing questions as: What attitude to adopt towards patients? How to deal with a request to facilitate a psychedelic experience for a patient? What care and advice to provide to patients seeking treatment outside mental health care? The panel will explore various potentially useful answers to these issues.