Drug Science podcast: Psychedelics for palliative care

This is a Drug Science podcast in which Professor Nutt and Dr Ross talk about the land of Golden Wattle – a DMT-rich plant – fighting for its Drug policies being based on Science. Dr Margaret Ross is a Senior Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist from Melbourne, Australia and the Chief Principal Investigator for Australia’s first psilocybin assisted psychotherapy study. Throughout her career, her main focus has been youth mental health and more recently cancer and palliative care. Following working as a research psychologist and clinical trial coordinator for The University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Health, Margaret decided to move into researching alternatives for her oncology patients who were terrified of dying and experiencing existential distress in the face of their diagnosis. After seeing the compelling results of US-based research into the use of psilocybin assisted therapy for patients with existential distress in the face of terminal cancer, she decided to set on a fight so that a similar treatment would soon become an option within Australia.