Rachel Yehuda
Director of The Parsons Research Center for Psychedelic Healing at Mount Sinai and Endowed Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, known for research on traumatic stress, PTSD, intergenerational trauma, and psychedelic-assisted therapies.
Psychedelic Therapies Near Approval Before Care Systems Are Ready
Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai and Matthew Zorn of HHS argue that the arrival of prescription psychedelic therapies will turn less on the drugs alone than on the clinical systems built around them. In a discussion at Aspen Ideas: Health moderated by William Brangham, they describe a field nearing FDA review while still facing unresolved questions about evidence, training, reimbursement, patient selection and the risk that approval is mistaken for a general green light.
Psychedelic Medicine’s Main Challenge Is Delivery, Not Drug Approval
At Aspen Ideas: Health, trauma researcher Rachel Yehuda and federal health adviser Matthew Zorn argued that the central question for psychedelic medicine is not simply whether compounds such as MDMA and psilocybin can win approval, but what kind of treatment they would become. Yehuda cautioned that the molecule alone is not the intervention: preparation, setting, trained clinicians and integration may be essential to both safety and benefit. Zorn said federal momentum could move the field toward medical use, but approval would leave unresolved the harder problems of delivery, coverage, evidence and access.