ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Therapeutic touch is often used in psychedelic therapy, but what ethical guidelines and boundaries should researchers and therapists follow? What can we learn from patient perspectives about consent, and where to draw the line?
In this episode, Dr. Rachel Ham joins us from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia to discuss two companion studies from her research group: one capturing experiences of therapeutic touch from participants in a psilocybin trial, and the other capturing how researchers and therapists think through consent, boundaries, and the discomfort of getting it wrong.
We discuss the gap between what participants expect touch to feel like and what it turns out to mean to them, the ethical tension around withholding contact from someone in genuine distress, and what a truly individualized consent process for psychedelic medicine might look like.
