How LA-Based Therapists Are Offering Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Their Practices

Journey Clinical

• August 7, 2024

Last month, we hosted a panel for our LA-based member therapists to foster community and collaboration. Our panel covered how the medical aspect of KAP treatment works, how our therapists have built KAP into their practice, stories of patient transformation, KAP for women of color, using mindfulness techniques for integration, and the importance of community for clinicians doing this work.

We’d like to thank our incredible panelists for making this an event to remember:

• Kat Olive from Journey Clinical’s Clinical Operations Team
• Brian Shiers, LMFT, M.A, CMF: alignedmindtherapy@gmail.com
• Denise M. Williams, LMFT, M.A.: dwilliams@well-play.com

And a special shout-out to two Journey Clinical KAP providers who spoke at the end of the panel:

• Abigail Glass, MFT shared about her upcoming virtual summit “Beyond the Journey” focusing on preparation and integration of non-ordinary states of consciousness experiences
• Rosa Casquino, LCSW shared how she offers KAP to clients remotely through Journey Clinical. Follow Rosa on Instagram to learn more about KAP!

In case you weren’t able to join us, we’ve gathered some of the biggest insights from the discussion below.

On Journey Clinical’s Collaborative Care Model

In our patient-centered collaborative care model, our highly-trained, in-house medical team takes on all medical responsibilities of KAP (patient eligibility, prescriptions, and outcome monitoring) while our member psychotherapists take on the psychotherapy (preparation sessions, dosing journey, and integration sessions). This approach allows patients to remain in therapy with existing clinicians, receive personalized treatment plans, and experience the highest quality of comprehensive care possible. We asked Kat, Denise, and Brian to speak more about the benefits of collaborative care.

• From Kat: “The medical team’s responsibility is to ensure safety. We evaluate each client really thoroughly and make sure that they’re cleared from a medical and psychiatric standpoint so they can engage in this really beautiful medicine with their psychotherapists.
  • [Psychotherapists] provide psychotherapy and any other support that [their] clients might need with some peace of mind that they have a medical team to back them up. We also encourage our therapists to communicate any therapeutic goals that they create with their patients so we can take that into account when they’re creating that plan of care.”
• From Denise: “With Journey Clinical, it’s easy for my patients to receive care. They get their questions answered and it allows me to still be the therapist I need to be without the red tape. Journey Clinical has been very helpful and responsive in getting support for my clients.”
• From Brian: “The medical team has just been very attentive and available. The idea of doing this kind of work and having not just one provider – but a whole team of providers and a community of experts to answer my questions – just makes it feel like I’m able to educate people about KAP with a sense that Journey Clinical is supporting me.”

Supporting Women of Color with Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

Denise, who primarily works with women of color who are experiencing depression, anxiety, and generational trauma, shared the patient outcomes she has seen from KAP:

Denise continued: “For me, that’s what is showing such a profound difference. What I’ve been able to see from my clients with severe anxiety is that for the first time, there’s space between them and their anxiety. I’ve had several journeys with my clients where they step back into the room and say ‘I didn’t know what it was like to not be depressed,’ and they talk about things they couldn’t talk about before. It’s magical.”

The Importance of Preparation and Integration

At Journey Clinical, we believe that the ongoing, positive, and trusted relationship between the patient and their psychotherapist is the key to delivering KAP safely and effectively. We asked Brian to talk about why working with a therapist to process the KAP experience is so important:

With KAP as an adjunct to psychotherapy, therapists can work within their own practice and implement other therapeutic approaches such as IFS, Gestalt, EMDR, and many more. Brian, who has a background of 32 years in a mindfulness approach, spoke more about using mindfulness techniques during preparation and integration: “There are different ways to practice mindfulness that allow people to sit adjacent to a difficult memory without pushing it away or getting lost in it. Finding that middle ground is very helpful, and we have time to work through that over weeks in preparation. There are different meditative practices that I do to coat the room with my attention and intention to give my clients the best possible care.”

The Future of the Collaborative Care Model: Support for Group/Retreat KAP

As more therapists are becoming interested in hosting group/retreat KAP sessions, Kat spoke about the measures Journey Clinical’s medical team takes to support these modalities:

Kat continued: “We’re always updating our protocols with current research for evidence-based practices in mind, along with the interests of psychotherapists to expand access to the therapeutic settings they want to offer.”

Denise and Brian echoed many psychotherapists’ interests in Group KAP as a modality when discussing future goals for their therapeutic practices.

• From Denise: “Group work is important to me because community is where the healing is. When I did my first group session, the women who participated are still connecting with each other because they all shared that experience. My ultimate goal is to be able to have women travel for retreats. They’re extremely busy, so it’s important to give them the space to get away from their busy lives to heal properly.
• From Brian: “Retreats are definitely on my list. There’s something about pilgrimage that creates a community and container for the psychedelic journey. That integration is communal and very powerful. I’m thinking about starting a group practice next year with people that have this as a specialty.”

You can listen to the entire panel here.