The Psychedelic Access and Research European Alliance (PAREA) has acquired a very prominent new affiliate organization in the field of mental health.
On Thursday, PAREA announced that the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) was now a full-fledged member of the organization.
The EPA is the primary association representing psychiatry in Europe and has over 78,000 members.
Thrilled to announce that the European Psychiatric Association is joining PAREA as a Full Member! Creating safe and sustainable integration models will be one of the most critical issues as we prepare for the roll out. Central to this will be training of psychedelic therapists.
— PAREA (@PareaScience) October 14, 2022
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PAREA describes itself as a multidisciplinary civil society partnership comprised of 15 member organizations including Heroic Hearts Project – U.K., MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, Awakn Life Sciences Corp (NEO: AWKN) (OTCQB: AWKNF), the European Brain Council and many others.
The organization formally launched on June 23 this year and it is essentially concerned with helping to pave the way for psychedelic-assisted therapies (PAT) to be integrated into mainstream healthcare in Europe.
“Building on several decades of research which accelerated in the last few years, psychedelic-assisted therapies offer a very real promise of becoming efficacious, rapidly acting, durable, toxicologically safe treatments for many brain disorders, including mental health conditions such as depression, PTSD, and anxiety. Indeed, 84 million Europeans struggle with mental health disorders and in a few years’ time millions of them might be eligible for a prescription of PAT,” said PAREA representatives.
PAREA also stated that training psychedelic therapists and developing training curricula for healthcare professionals will be essential in the process of beginning to work with patients who are in an altered state of consciousness.
The organization says professional associations like the EPA and independent certification boards will be needed at the beginning of this process to help address a vast range of concerns and requirements related to the knowledge needed for proficiently delivering psychedelic therapies.
“The oversight and active involvement of the European Psychiatric Association will be indispensable in advancing these major tasks and in building a significant medical oversight over PATs in Europe,” added PAREA.
