Speaker Bio
Max Wolff is a psychologist and psychotherapist. He currently serves as the Head of Psychotherapy Training and Research at the MIND Foundation. His research is concerned with the psychotherapeutic mechanisms and contextual conditions of psychedelic-occasioned psychological change, and aims to make the findings of psychotherapy research applicable to the practice of psychedelic therapy. As a psychotherapist, Max works with cognitive-behavioral, acceptance-based, and emotion-focused approaches. He directs the MIND Foundation’s APT Program, an international training in psychedelic-augmented psychotherapy for psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals. He is also involved as a researcher and study therapist in the EPIsoDE trial, a phase 2b clinical trial investigating the safety and efficacy of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) Mannheim, Germany, and Charité University Medicine Berlin.
ICPR 2024 Abstract
Avoidance and acceptance in psilocybin-augmented psychotherapy for depression
The efficacy of psychedelic therapies has been attributed to the enduring change from excessive experiential avoidance towards more acceptance that these treatments appear to facilitate. From a psychotherapeutic perspective, this effect can be explained by acceptance-promoting learning processes that may under favorable conditions unfold in the psychedelic state. Conversely, under less favorable conditions, avoidance-promoting learning processes may also occur [1]. In the EPIsoDE trial (efficacy and safety of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression) completed in December 2024, 144 patients' avoidance- and acceptance-related learning experiences during psilocybin sessions were assessed using the Avoidance/Acceptance-Promoting Experiences Questionnaire (APEQ) [2]. In line with results from a previous survey among naturalistic psychedelic users [2], it is hypothesized that more acceptance-related psilocybin experiences predict stronger reductions in trait experiential avoidance following the treatment, whereas more avoidance-related experiences predict weaker reductions, or even increases, in experiential avoidance. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that (3) the negative effect of avoidance-related experiences is attenuated, or even reversed, among individuals who report stronger acceptance-related experiences. In this presentation, I present the results and discuss implications for research and clinical practice.
1. Wolff M, Evens R, Mertens LJ, Koslowski M, Betzler F, Gründer G, u. a. Learning to Let Go: A Cognitive-Behavioral Model of How Psychedelic Therapy Promotes Acceptance. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 21. Februar 2020;11:5.
2. Wolff M, Mertens LJ, Walter M, Enge S, Evens R. The Acceptance/Avoidance-Promoting Experiences Questionnaire (APEQ): A theory-based approach to psychedelic drugs’ effects on psychological flexibility. Journal of Psychopharmacology. 7. März 2022;36(3):387–408.