Psychological effects on healthy volunteers/therapist-training study recruiting therapists
On October 3, 2009, the FDA approved our protocol for studying the effects of MDMA on healthy volunteers. On December 21, 2009, the protocol was approved by the IRB. In this study the Mithoefers will administer MDMA to healthy volunteers who are part of our therapist-training program. The goal of this study is two-fold: (1) the study will allow us to learn more about the psychological effects of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in healthy individuals; and (2) the therapists in our training program will have the opportunity to have a firsthand experience with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, which we suspect will enable them to be better therapists when they administer MDMA to a subject in one of our future studies.
We are anticipating that we will need about 20–30 therapist teams in approximately three years for our two large-scale, multi-site, Phase 3 studies. Since the training program can take a long time, we are currently soliciting more applications from qualified therapists interested in conducting clinical research with MAPS. Applications are encouraged from therapists with some or all of the following qualifications: 1) treated patients with PTSD, 2) worked with non-ordinary states of consciousness, and/or 3) conducted clinical research. Applications from male/female teams are highly encouraged. If interested, please contact Berra Yazar-Klosinski, Ph.D. at: berra@maps.org