Show Notes

• Mind Medicine Australia website
• Tania de Jong AM TED talk
• Tania de Jong AM – Previous Unstress Episode 
• Dr Wade Davis – Plants of the Gods webinar
• Bruce Lipton – Previous Unstress Episode
• Admiral Chris Barrie – Previous Unstress Episode
• Mind Medicine Australia Podcast

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] Introduction and acknowledgment of traditional lands
• [00:02:49] Introduction to Tania de Jong and the topic of psychedelic-assisted therapies
• [00:03:15] Tania de Jong discusses the inception of Mind Medicine Australia and her personal journey
• [00:04:28] The impact of psychedelic-assisted therapies on mental health
• [00:07:35] Cultural and historical context of psychedelic use
• [00:11:26] The process and challenges of legalizing psychedelic-assisted therapies in Australia
• [00:15:13] Details on the training for psychedelic-assisted therapies
• [00:19:26] The clinical application and potential of psychedelic treatments
• [00:22:27] Tania’s advice for social entrepreneurs
• [00:24:55] Public and professional reception to new mental health treatments
• [00:28:31] The transformative impact of psychedelic-assisted therapies
• [00:32:59] The role of connection and the effect of therapies on patient empowerment
• [00:34:26] Conclusion and additional resources offered by Mind Medicine Australia
•  

Tania de Jong AM: Mind Medicine Australia Update 

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Doctor Ron Ehrlich. Now, before I start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. Well, today we are going to revisit the world of psychedelic-assisted therapies. And this is a huge breakthrough in mental health in Australia and globally. In fact, now we are not talking about the recreational use of psychedelics. This is a very different story. This is the therapeutic use of it under supervision. And it has incredible potential for, as you will learn, some fairly intractable problems that seem to be growing, not being solved, but actually growing in our community. My guest is Tania de Jong AM. She is the co-founder and executive director of Mind Medicine Australia. She regularly presents on psychedelic assisted therapies, mental health and wellbeing at major conferences and events around the world and to governments, regulators, clinicians, philanthropists and the general public. It is through mind medicines advocacy, including the fact that the TGA in Australia received over 13,000 submissions, public submissions supporting the rescheduling of psychedelics that from July 1st, 2023, psychedelic assisted therapy is available in Australia under the strict supervision of a specially trained therapist. Now, in coming weeks, we’ll be talking to the first psychiatrist in Australia to deliver that treatment, to the first patient under the new guidelines, that is Melbourne psychiatrist Dr Eli Kotler. But back to Tania. She is one of Australia’s most successful female entrepreneurs and innovators. And she was named in the 100 Women of Influence, the 100 Australia’s most influential entrepreneurs, and named as one of the hundred most influential people in psychedelics globally in 2021. Now, Tania has also done a Ted talk, which I’d recommend to you, which was sparked international interest. Tania has garnered an international reputation as a performer, a singer, speaker, entrepreneur and a passionate leader for social change. Her mission is to change the world one voice at a time. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Tania De Jong. Welcome back Tania.

Tania de Jong AM [00:02:49] Thank you. Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:51] Tania. Since we last spoke, which was about a year, a year and a half ago, we spoke as you were, putting together the mine Medicine Australia. So much has happened since then, and I’ve come to give it a little bit of an introduction about mine, Medicine Australia. But tell us a little bit about it from your perspective, why and how you and your husband Peter started it and why you got involved?

Tania de Jong AM [00:03:15] Well, we we started the charity. We were started six charities overall between us. And so we we’re serial social entrepreneurs and we’re philanthropists, and we care deeply about creating social change and systemic change on a in a scalable way. And so we were fortunate enough to come across these medicines. I guess I’m a hacker of body, mind and spirit have been since I was in my 20s and I came across psychedelic assisted therapies by chance, was a blog of Tim Ferriss. I realised now that’s not by chance because he talks about psychedelic assisted therapies all the time, but that was certainly something new for me. And I had never had any drugs in my life. And I was, I was, I guess I was pretty anti-drug and, I certainly didn’t know what psychedelics were or what they did. I never really understood them. And because I had always been very protective of my singing voice, I also I never smoked or, you know, done any of these sorts of things, and I never even got drunk. And singing has always been my drug of choice. And I talk a lot about the neuroscientific benefits of singing in my Ted talk, which you will have when I.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:24] Want to talk a little bit about that. I want to talk a little bit about that too. But go on.

Tania de Jong AM [00:04:28] Yeah, yeah. So, basically I read an article that Tim Ferriss had, linked in his blog and it was called The Tripp Treatment. It was about, end of life, study that was taking place or had taken place at New York University with 80% of the patients had gone into remission after just two medicinal doses of psilocybin from their end of life stress and anxiety associated with a terminal diagnosis of cancer. And this is quite remarkable. One of the one of the people profiled was was a Jewish man who had experienced intergenerational Holocaust trauma. And this resonated strongly with me because my parents and grandparents, Holocaust survivors. And so, you know, we’re all carrying if, if not our own trauma, we’re often mostly carrying the trauma of our ancestors and, and some other kinds of collective trauma as well. And we. Having that epigenetic clay in our cells and so on. And, I guess it’s all about, for me anyway, facing into that trauma and, seeing what I can let go of, on this, on this journey of life so that I can be a lighter and, more evolved and person of higher consciousness. And so that’s why I was so interested to delve deeply into. Into what, whatever it was that I was potentially storing inside my own cells. And, you know, as Bessel van der Kolk famously says, the body knows the score and no matter what we may think. About ourselves. You know, we might think we’re all sorted, but very few of us are really sorted. And, you know, so the body, the cells, they’re carrying, the imprint of the trauma that either way or, parents or grandparents or other ancestors or the collective is it has or is experiencing and even now, I mean, not even now. I mean, especially now, so much, you know, of collective humanity is is suffering with trauma right now. And really has been I mean, I think we we always have been, it just seems to be more pronounced than ever right now. And this collective trauma is. It’s held within each individual as well. But it’s it’s coming out in a variety of different ways that signify symptoms of trauma.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:00] I know that you I, we just you’ve recently put on a fabulous webinar, which I know modern medicine puts on quite a few in regular, but we’ve recently listened to Wade Davis, and Wade has been studying, this for 50 years in a cultural, setting. And, it’s not a I mean, to many people, it may be new, and to others it may always be this recreational idea, but it’s so much more than that. I mean, therapeutically and and culturally, I thought that was an incredible webinar that he gave and an insight.

Tania de Jong AM [00:07:35] Well, that’s a thing. I mean, you know, we stand on the shoulders of, you know, extraordinary visionary healers, really medicine people and plant. You know, plant leaders, who really brought these medicines through the ages. I mean, this is very ancient wisdom. We know through archaeology that, psilocybin and other types of plant medicines have been with humanity since the beginning of human civilisation, healing us, helping us with ceremony and raising of consciousness and so on. And of course, in many indigenous cultures, these medicines are just part of the culture. You know, they they’re very much part of that can be part of the religion or just the way that young people, have a vision quest and, you know, transition into adulthood in the way that the births and deaths and all different rites of passage occur within those particular communities. And so it’s very important for anyone listening to understand that psychedelic assisted therapies are not new, nor are they experimental. They’ve been with humanity for a long time. And in the 50s and 60s, tens of thousands of patients were treated in clinical environments under the supervision of trained therapists with MDMA and psilocybin assisted therapies to incredible outcomes. I mean, they were healing people from depression and anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, addictions, relationship therapy, you know, a number of different conditions were being treated. And now in this renaissance of interest in this field, the field is rapidly emerging, and we’re seeing very high potential, for treatment of very intractable conditions like anorexia and other eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder. We’re also seeing some interesting work being done in early stage dementia and cognitive decline with psilocybin, Parkinson’s, autism spectrum disorder, fibromyalgia, strokes, even, you know, there’s there’s an enormous amount of potential uses for these medicines, in a clinical environment. And, you know, there’s obviously a lot of research that’s taking place. It’s been hundreds of trials over the last 10 to 15 years in this space. And they’ve been showing like extraordinary remission rates. So we’re seeing remission rates across the board of 60 to 80% after just 2 to 3 medicinal treatments with a short course of psychotherapy. And this is compared against existing treatments, which you know only too well, being a doctor yourself, where in the case of depression, even just last week, there was an article in The Australian that suggested that as few as 15% of patients going to remission from antidepressants and or psychotherapy, and in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, as few as 5 to 10% of patients are going to remission from existing treatments. So the majority of patients are not getting well. Indeed, many patients are getting worse. And and of course, the withdrawal symptoms from some of these medications are, significant. And many patients find it very difficult to withdraw from them. So we are living in a world where we’re seeing increase in mental, you know, illness and, psychological pain and suffering and a sense of isolation and disconnection and loneliness. Within many, many people. That was certainly triggered by the pandemic, but it was already there. It was already once.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:26] It was turbocharged.

Tania de Jong AM [00:11:27] Absolutely. And now we see a significant amount of isolation. We see a lot of people who are living alone, working from home. They’re quite isolated. Many are suffering with mental illnesses. At last count, Australia had 1 in 4 with mental illness and 1 in 6, I think, on antidepressants, with 1 in 4 older adults over the age of 55 on anti-depressants. And this is is a really tragic situation because as as we know, these anti-depressants numb the emotional landscape. And that means that often patients, just saying life in more shades of grey and. And for many patients, they, they don’t manage the condition. For some patients, maybe they manage things, but certainly not for the majority. And so what we need to really start saying, and this is why we work so hard with modern medicine, Australia and the rescheduling of psilocybin and MDMA, which. Retrieved last year after a number of years of very hard work. Is that the first.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:35] A world first?

Tania de Jong AM [00:12:36] Yeah. Well, first in the first, patients, of course, have been treated. Just a couple of weeks ago in Australia in clinical environments. And more will be treated over the coming weeks and months and years, of course, a lot more. Doctor Cutler and Doctor Ted Cassidy were the first two psychiatrists in Australia to treat patients. After a 50 year gap with these therapies, they treated their patients with MDMA assisted therapy. That they’ve given the first of three medicinal sessions to those patient, to their patients. And in the case of Doctor Cassidy, he described one day of therapy with his patient is equivalent to one year of therapy with her, which is really significant. And both of these psychiatrists were trained by Mind Medicine Australia through our Certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapies, which is a world leading course in a world leading faculty. The medicines were supplied by us. We have an arrangement with a company in Canada. So we’re able to provide the medicines very cheaply, which is very important because we don’t have any kind of profit motive. We just want to make sure these treatments can get to people as equitably and affordably, as possible. And, so that’s a really big driver for us. And the rescheduling means that psychiatrists who are authorised prescribers and they have to get their authorisation through an ethics committee, and the TGA can then start to treat their patients using this specific protocol that they’ve been trained with and the therapies that they choose for their multidisciplinary team of therapies, putting the patient right at the centre. So the patient is held by this wonderful group of trained therapists. So it’s an incredibly safe and generally a very effective process. Now, of course, this isn’t going to work for every single patient. So we don’t want to raise people’s hopes that this is going to necessarily be the cure, but it’s more likely to be the cure than some of the other cures that are, the non nodules that are around, because this is truly, curative therapy. And it’s not just a palliative therapy. So it’s very, very important to say that. And that is why the FDA in the US also named these medicines as breakthrough therapies, at which they only give that designation very rarely to medicines that could be vastly superior to existing treatments. So we have, you know, a hand in Australia, this amazing opportunity to lead in this field.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:24] And with good reason.

Tania de Jong AM [00:15:26] Right. And and to really start to, to heal some of the immense suffering that’s in the community. And it’s very important to remember that. You know, there is an enormous amount of suffering in our families, in our workplaces and in our communities at the moment. And everyone deserves access to safe and effective medicine.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:49] Absolutely. And I think, you know, we were just talking about this before we started this interview, Tanya, that you really have thrown yourself into the deep end of health care. And, you know, there’s a paradox in health care, which I have noticed in the last 40 years of practice. And that is, while good health may make sense, it doesn’t make dollars. And there are a lot of vested interests involved in this. How have you found this being? This is as the FDA has unusually, uniquely, very, very appropriately said, it’s a breakthrough medicine. This how has it been embraced by the profession and the regulatory bodies? I mean, I know it’s been ready. The TGA has approved it, but it hasn’t been embraced.

Tania de Jong AM [00:16:37] Actually, it’s been embraced very well. I mean, intakes for our certificate in psychedelic assisted therapies have been every single intake has been full. And I think we’re up to about intake seven and eight or more this year now. So you know, we’ve trained by the end of this year will have trained over 500 psychiatrists, psychologists, GP’s, psychotherapists, social workers, nurses, occupational therapists, counsellors and other qualified therapists. So and we’re seeing very high quality therapists applying for the training and mostly from Australia, but also quite a from New Zealand. And we’ve even had people fly from the US and Europe to do this training because our faculty is so extraordinary. We have Doctor Gabor met Doctor Basil van der Kolk, Bill Richards, Professor David, not we Dublin. I mean, we have the most extraordinary faculty, as you’d be aware of. And people are just loving the training. Many of them describe it as the best training they’ve ever done in their careers. And many of them have been in the, you know, professionals for decades. So for them to say that just shows the calibre of the course. So I guess, you know, we’re training a lot of people. There’s an enormous appetite for that from clinicians. And in general, most clinicians really want these therapies to be part of their toolbox. There are a few, you know, old fashioned psychiatrists, and some others probably, who don’t understand the medicines, haven’t done their homework on them and don’t realise the the safety and efficacy. And we’ll say things like they call psychosis or they cause addiction or whatever. And none of that has ever been proven in any of the research that has been done. That’s not the case. It’s what unfortunately, it’s what professionals say when they don’t want a medicine to to be available. But as with any kind of medicine. Wrong.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:43] And you.

Tania de Jong AM [00:18:44] Well, I just want to finish that point. I mean, obviously it’s very important that any patient is properly screened for any type of treatment. So whether it’s an antidepressant or a psychedelic assisted therapy, all patients need to be given full disclosure on the risks and benefits of all treatments. And that’s not happening at the moment with antidepressants. I know of a lot of people who go to their doctors. They’ve not been given full disclosure on on the risks and also the withdrawal from those medications.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:19:13] With the psychedelic assisted therapy course. It’s I was going to ask you who who could do it? And you’ve given me quite a list there already. But what is the program? How long is the program? How long?

Tania de Jong AM [00:19:26] What’s involved with the training, you mean? Yes. Yes. So it’s a four month course that aligns to, the professionals medical practice or clinical practice, so that basically there’s, an online section of it where a lot of the global faculty teach online. And then there’s there’s reading and reflection and, and all sorts of other, opportunities for the, for the students to connect. And then there’s a six day intensive, towards the end of the training where all of the students come together and they actually experience altered states of consciousness through holographic breathwork. And then, of course, they all meet each other at the intensive, and many of them become lifelong friends and form therapeutic treatment groups to to to treat their patients. But it’s an extraordinary course because, as I mentioned, the calibre of the faculty and the particular skills that people are being taught and not just relevant for psychedelic assisted therapies, many of the doctors, have and therapists have described the training that they’ve received as being so helpful, just in terms of their general practice and their own understanding of therapeutic skills and altered states and a whole range of other. Knowledge and skills that they learned during the course.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:48] I mean, for a profession that has been brought up and literally trained on managing chronic diseases, be they physical or mental. This must be an absolute revelation, a liberation, an injection of wow, you mean remission? You mean cure. I mean, these aren’t words that are typically thrown around with preventable chronic diseases, which we now have an epidemic of.

Tania de Jong AM [00:21:14] No. That’s right. I mean, the other thing is to like, we’ve had an enormous amount of support, obviously, from the general public. I mean, that was and that was clinicians and researchers as well. You know, they over 13,000 people put in submissions to the TGA, to 98% of which were in support of the rescheduling of these medicines. So that just goes to show how desperately people are seeking solutions and treatments and wanting to get well and lead meaningful and happy lives, which is everyone’s birthright.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:46] Yeah, yeah, I know that you mentioned epigenetics there, which was music to our ears. I mean, I’m one of my great mentors is, Bruce Lipton, and I’ve interviewed him on the podcast. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s and it is true about the collective trauma that we carry with us. So this has just been an amazing initiative on your part. You mentioned you’d been involved in six other social entrepreneur, you know, in other, initiatives. So you’re a serial social entrepreneur. What do you what advice do you give to people that, that, wanting to do that kind of thing and make a difference? Thanks for your support.

Tania de Jong AM [00:22:27] It’s bloody hard, It’s very hard.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:30] Running,

Tania de Jong AM [00:22:30] Okay. It’s very hard. But, I mean, if people passionately want to create change and. And they’re committed and determined and very hardworking, and don’t get put off by rejection, then by all means, have a go. But I think the most important thing is to to put a group of people around you that can support you through the inevitable ups and downs of doing something, being a pioneer. Being a pioneer is typically very difficult, and you’ll generally be the subject of attacks from people who wish to maintain the status quo within whatever sector you’re going into. And so there’s so there’s that you do need to be resilient, and you do need to have people around you, not just family, but but friends and colleagues. And we have an extraordinary advisory panel and ambassadors and a lived experience panel and so on. And these people, as well as our team and our board have stood behind us throughout, you know, these last five years. We’re celebrating our fifth anniversary this month, and we couldn’t have done it without those people because they’ve been so supportive. Things have not always been easy. And setting up a charity is never easy. It’s very, very hard work and no one thanks you for it. And it’s also hard to raise the funds that are necessary as well. So, you know, you you do pick up a lot of skills. If you decide to run a charity, it’s good to have a lot of skills and then you’re going to learn a lot more. And you know, if you doing something that inspires people, the great thing is that people will really jump on board. I mean, one of the things about this project is that our mission is very clear and it’s also very pure. So as I said earlier, we don’t. I want to make money from this. In fact, we donate our time and our money to it, and what we’re doing captures the imagination of a lot of people of all different ages and backgrounds. And so we found some extraordinary people that work with us, to be part of this and to help us achieve the mission. And no one can ever achieve anything on their own, though Margaret Mead famously said, never doubt that a small group of people can never change the world, and it’s the only thing that ever has. So a small group of people is very powerful. If you can get others alongside you and work together on your big hairy audacious goals, then who knows what you can achieve.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:55] Well, when you say no one thanks you for all I can. Given the given the intractable problem of mental health that you’ve tackled here, I imagine there are going to be an awful lot of people who will be there who do thank you for it. And not just patients, but also the practitioners delivery.

Tania de Jong AM [00:25:13] Oh, no. Look, we do, we do, we do get an extraordinary amount. We do get a lot credited. But we also have, you know, had to deal with quite a lot of, you know, unnecessary, obstacles. And at the end of the day, if we just focussed on what really matters. And by that, I mean, if we just focussed on the suffering which is part of everything in everyone’s worlds at the moment and certainly has been for a long time, and if we just focussed on the patients who are suffering, you know, all of this, all the noise would fade into the background because we’d all be focusing on what really matters, which is getting people healthy and well and, living lives that where they can contribute to society. And we really need that right now. I mean, we’re living in the most uncertain and divided and, perilous times for the human civilisation. So we need to come together and we need to build understanding and unity and compassion and empathy between us before it’s too late.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:23] I know when you were presenting your introduction at the White Davis webinar, one image that really stood in my mind was this functional MRI image that you showed of how the, psychedelic assisted therapy works. And it was one of connection.

Tania de Jong AM [00:26:40] Yes. That’s.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:42] An actually connection within the, the brain itself. But actually it that was just such a powerful image.

Tania de Jong AM [00:26:49] Yeah. Well, I mean, that is really at the heart of all of this is that people who are suffering with mental illness, like anxiety or depression or trauma, generally feel quite isolated and separated and alone. And so these medicines give the gift of connection, connection to self, to others, to the planet. And it’s with that increased neuroplasticity, these increased literally neural connections in the brain that provide this window of opportunity for trained therapists to work with you, to then help you heal much more quickly. Which is why Doctor Cassidy can say, well, it was like doing one year of therapy in one day, because that’s the window of opportunity that therapists have. When a patient’s brain is more flexible and not stuck in the rigid thought loops of, not good enough, things are never going to work. And in that black hole that really feels like an endless black hole. So we have to add a lot of light and slivers of light and hope. And the thing that I’m most grateful for at the moment is that there is there is finally hope, for many more people in Australia to access these treatments. And gradually, you know, as the system evolves and, as more and more clinicians become trained and start to use these treatments, I’m sure we’re going to see some outstanding results and healing occurring, which is just so important.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:12] I thought it was I thought it was such a such a wonderful, actually, clinical image of the brain connection within an individual. But it was a wonderful metaphor for, a much greater connection, beyond just what’s going on in your own head.

Tania de Jong AM [00:28:31] Well, that’s right. I think that the connection that one gets through these medicines is, is much more than the brain connection. It really is about the fact that we are living in a multi dimensional world, and we actually all do have access to this unity consciousness, but we just don’t always know how to access it and be given those tools. So the other really important thing to say about these treatments is they do give the patients a sense of agency of in being empowered for their own healing. So instead of taking a daily pill and, you know, having to go to therapy every week or whatever, it might be an awful lot of medications. In some cases, this is a chance for a patient to become. Truly empowered for their own healing, and to work with the therapist as a partner, in a sense, to facilitate their own healing, rather than expecting some something in a package to make you better, which often it doesn’t. And and often you’re not aware of the side effects. And one of the really important things about these treatments is that the side effect profile is extremely low, so that, you know, at most patients might experience a headache or a little bit of nausea or something like that, but there’s nothing really significant that has ever come out of, any of the research that’s been done that shows any serious adverse events of of any nature.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:58] And that includes any addiction.

Tania de Jong AM [00:30:00] Oh, absolutely. No. I mean, these medicines and certainly not addictive. I mean, the the sort of medicine that I mean, when Peter and I first did the medicine in 2016, I mean, we, I mean, I thought I would, you know, that would be it, you know, that that was that one treatment. But then we we ended up having another treatment, you know, 12 months later in the Netherlands, it was it took us that long to integrate the experience. And the experience is not something that you want to go out and do every day. From it. I mean, it’s it’s really going to be giving you a lot of insights on your life, your work, your relationships, maybe any different aspects of your life that you need to look at. And then you need to actually make those changes because there’s no point having this incredible medicine if you just go back and do the same thing that you were doing before, because you actually will just relapse. So it’s very important, like with any type of behavioural change that actually, you know, it has to be implemented. But the good thing is that people feel so much more motivated to make those changes as a result of these treatments. They can really see. Firstly, they can let go of the past and not continue to allow the past to inhabit the present and affect the present in negative ways. So that’s that’s a really important factor of these medicines, of being able to not forget, but to forgive and accept the past and then be able to live in the present freely. And that’s the great gift of these medicines, is to live in the present with gratitude for everything that is that is here in this beautiful earthly plane, and between heaven and earth, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:40] No, no. I look, I know you introduced me about a year or two ago to Rear-Admiral Chris Barrie because there was another aspect of this which is the post-traumatic stress problem, which which, you know, I think the statistic was something like 50 servicemen died in Iran and Iraq, but 5 or 600 have taken their own lives and many suffer post-traumatic stress. So these kind of traumas just literally circle around in your brain. And that’s what that’s what’s so powerful about the connection that it allows you to connect beyond and with the world at large. And that’s something with all of us aspiring it. Is that more connection?

Tania de Jong AM [00:32:21] No. It is. I mean, you know, we think that we’re so connected because we’re living in a world where there’s so many devices and social media is so pervasive, but actually it’s it’s we are less connected than we were before in terms of our hearts being connected. And really, as human beings, we’re not social media, we’re actually social animals. And we need to touch and feel and experience things together. And that is part of what being a healthy human being is about. And unfortunately, we have also lost a lot of that in this very sort of isolated culture where we’re all talking more to our boxes and screens than we at one another. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:59] So yeah. So listen, Tanya, if someone if a practitioner or potential practitioner was listening to this and was inspired, or if a patient was interested in this, how what how should they connect, where would they go?

Tania de Jong AM [00:33:14] Just reach out to our website, Mind Medicine Australia talk and you can you can put an inquiry in for whatever it is that you are interested in. We have sections for patients. We have all the information about the certificate in psychedelic assisted therapies also on the website and a separate website for that which has detailed information about the course. Next intake, which starts on March the 1st, is completely full, but the one in July still has some places left. So I encourage people to hurry and apply. And we also have a wonderful, as you say, in a global free webinar series, which you often drop in through, with extraordinary speakers.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:53] And absolutely.

Tania de Jong AM [00:33:54] We also have a podcast series, which is very high quality as well. And so we’re publishing a lot of content all the time. And yeah, I just encourage people to reach out. And of course, if you can support please support we with a for but we can’t do this alone and we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. If it hadn’t been for the support of many, many other philanthropies, both large and small ones, who were making sure that, you know, these medicines can become accessible and affordable to those who need them the most.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:26] Well, Tania, thank you. We’ll have course have links to that in our show notes and in our social media. But thank you so much for everything that you have done and are doing and the difference that you are making. And for joining us today to share that wisdom and knowledge with us.

Tania de Jong AM [00:34:41] Thank you, Ron, and thanks for doing your great work.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:46] Thanks. Well, I’d encourage you to connect with Mind Medicine Australia. I think they have some great resources available to the public. And also if you’re a clinician who or a therapist who feels that this clinical assisting the psychedelic assisted therapy training is of interest to you, well, that’s the place to go as well. And when you hear about the results that are being achieved now, a lot of these problems are intractable that just go on for many years, decades, in fact with medication. But psychedelic therapy is not an ongoing, therapy. It is a 1 or 2 session session thing in collaboration with the therapist. And, there are some major breakthroughs that are made during that. And 80% of people who experience this therapy relate it as one of the five most meaningful events or things in their lives that they’d experienced in their lives. Now, that’s a hell of a accolade for a therapy. So this is a really big breakthrough in mental health in Australia. And Tanya and Peter Hunt, her husband, and mind Medicine Australia, have been leaders and should be applauded as they have been, and they will continue to be. So we will have links to Modern Medicine Australia. I would also encourage you to go to the unstressed health platform that’s unstressed health.com and join the unstressed health community. This is independent of the chemical, food and pharmaceutical industry and rather uniquely is focussed on one thing, and that is good health. So I’d encourage you to join that community and be part of that experience. I had this font. You will. Until next time. This is doctor Ron Erlich. Hey. Well, this podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.