“Access to a substance without access to a therapeutic container is not comprehensive mental health care.”
By Melissa Scannell, Indiana Psychedelic Society
For years, veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been asked to keep trying within a mental health system that too often offers symptom management without lasting relief. Many benefit from existing treatments, and those treatments remain essential. But others cycle through medications and therapies while still carrying nightmares, hypervigilance, depression, isolation and a nervous system that cannot recognize that the danger has ended.
The Trump administration’s decision to accelerate psychedelic research and expand pathways toward treatment represents a meaningful shift. In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to reduce barriers to research and speed the evaluation of psychedelic therapies for serious mental illness. The order included a $50 million federal commitment to ibogaine research and called for greater coordination among the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
That direction is already becoming action.
VA launched an MDMA-assisted therapy trial for veterans with PTSD and alcohol use disorder in May. It has also launched the PIVOT trial, which will study
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