Ethics Under Fire: Turning Rupture Into Structure After Lviv’s Therapist Education Program

By: Natalie Maximets, M.S.

From April 28 to May 4, MAPS facilitated an international educational program in Lviv, Ukraine, hosted by the Ukrainian Psychedelic Research Association (UPRA). The event brought together facilitators, clinicians, and international observers, motivated by a shared, sincere, and committed desire to introduce psychedelic-assisted therapy to a region shaped by ongoing collective trauma.

I took part in the training in a dual capacity, bringing both my psychological background and my experience in strategic communications, and representing the European Platform for Integration of Clinical MDMA (EPIC) in that context.

Midway through the program, a participant made a dehumanizing remark targeting an aspect of another attendee’s identity, triggering a rupture in the attendee’s sense of safety in the group setting. Dehumanization strips individuals of their human status by disregarding emotional and cognitive capacities or denying social belonging based on unchosen traits. While the visionary, cross-cultural healing potential of this event inspired hope, it also revealed something deeper: under the conditions of war, existing ethical frameworks and grievance procedures are limited in their ability to hold certain kinds of rupture. 

While the use of the remark itself was harmful, the events that unfolded afterward were the real stress test, exposing tensions, misunderstandings, and fragilities that surface some of the most urgent questions facing the psychedelic movement today.
When the issue was raised to the host, members of the training team offered a vague response that  neither named the harm nor engaged those affected in repair. In any case involving a grievance, it is challenging to navigate sensitive details. In this situation, the application of anonymity was particularly unclear and seemed to carry different meanings for facilitators, hosts, trainers, and participants. The experience as a whole destabilized some participants by undermining their sense of safety, exposing the limitations of safeguards adopted from other cultural contexts, and highlighting the need for a more intentional institutional response from MAPS and its global training partners in similar future situations. 

If the psychedelic movement intends to benefit people who are literally on the front lines, it needs more than resilience and inspiration – it also needs to understand and internalize the ways personal behavior can impact pedagogical responsibilities and institutional obligations, and prepare itself accordingly. Ultimately, the incident and its aftermath revealed not just interpersonal fragility but also structural unpreparedness to act in a war-torn reality, and posed the question: Are we prepared—not just for healing—but for the discomfort, emotional strain, and ethical complexity that healing work inevitably brings?

As a communications strategist, I observed that this was not a failure of intent but a failure of structure. In the absence of clearly defined terms and escalation protocols, even ethical instincts can falter. Goodwill alone is not enough; ethical clarity depends on direct verification, shared language, and operational procedures—especially when harm occurs, and even more so under high-stakes conditions.

In this incident, the disconnect was initially framed as a misunderstanding—different parties interpreting the term “anonymity” in different ways and having varying understandings of the language used. A participant submitted a clear written suggestion to the Ukrainian organizers after the incident, offering specific language for a group-facing acknowledgment that intended to name the harm without escalating tension, but the message was not engaged with. 

Instead, MAPS facilitators acted based on a verbal relay that conveyed a request for anonymity, and did not directly confirm the grievance with the original source. The result of this game of telephone was a general message shared with trainees about mutual respect. In English, it lacked specificity; in translation, it became even more diffuse.

This wasn’t an intentional omission. It was a procedural blind spot, sharpened by pressure. Ethical decisions had been passed along informal channels, unverified, in a trauma-exposed context where precision mattered most. There was no map for escalation—no shared process for checking what had been said, what had been received, or what was needed next.
What looked like a mismatch in communication style or cultural readiness was, in hindsight, something simpler: the absence of a shared response framework. Without direct confirmation, key details were filtered and diluted. No party had the full picture, and so, no response could fully hold the moment. Well-meaning efforts stalled at the edge of ambiguity.

This is how harm compounds: not through dramatic failures, but through quiet procedural omissions. When no one is tasked with closing the loop, it stays open. And even high-integrity teams are left to navigate uncertainty with no anchor.
According to SAMHSA, trustworthiness, transparency, and collaboration are core tenets of trauma-informed practice—not because they prevent rupture, but because they offer a pathway to repair. Institutions that integrate trauma literacy with structured response models show what is possible when care and clarity are designed to move in tandem.

In moments like this, strategic communications extend beyond messaging—they become crisis response. In this case, the ripple effects extended further across months of dialogue, fact-checking, narrative clarification, and policy refinement. That sustained effort helped reveal what the moment itself had obscured. The ability to contain harm depends not just on insight, but on a system capable of holding complexity. If there is one enduring lesson from this experience, it is that clarity cannot be improvised; rather than building it in real time under pressure, it should be established and practiced well before the crisis arrives.