Step by Step

For decades, mental health treatment options have excluded the promising segment of psychedelic-assisted therapies. Just as psychiatrists, psychologists, and other researchers were making incredible headway on their studies of compounds like MDMA, psilocybin, and Ayahuasca (among others) in the 1990’s, the U.S. government criminalized these substances, blocking research across the globe. 

Efficacy rates for treating PTSD with MDMA-Assisted Therapy (MDMA-AT) exceed 87% in clinical trials.

However, despite this unprecedented therapeutic result, in August of 2024, the FDA determined not to approve MDMA-AT for the treatment of PTSD in the United States.

I am living proof that MDMA-Assisted Therapy (MDMA-AT) is safe, effective, life-changing, and even life-saving. By not approving MDMA-AT, the FDA is risking the lives of the 13 million Americans suffering from PTSD. None of my previous therapies had ever come close to unravelling my trauma as MDMA-AT.

I am disappointed that the FDA has chosen to prevent millions of other Americans like myself, particularly survivors, from regaining resilience and improving the quality of life that was robbed from them. Instead, their lives will continue to be in jeopardy every single day.

The extraordinary promise of these therapeutic modalities cannot be overlooked, as the efficacy and impact of these treatments are setting a new bar for effective, safe, and enduring mental health treatments. Let’s accelerate the spread of traumatic recovery, grounded in science.

Our 2024 Initiatives

Protea Foundation focuses on three areas: (1) access to individual treatment, specifically for marginalized populations; (2) therapist training; and (3) education supporting resilience and trauma prevention.

Since individual treatment is legally possible only through clinical trials at this stage, we are initially supporting training for therapists in psychedelic-assisted therapies. Training is a giant lever in our cause, because, over the next several years, there will be far too much demand for far too few therapists.

Meanwhile, we support educational programming in communities: speaking engagements, events, and published and digital resources for trauma awareness – this includes topics like Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs), abuse (sexual, physical and emotional), Complex PTSD, developmental trauma, resilience, trauma prevention, and related women’s mental health issues (depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and more). Help us help people connect the dots between childhood experience and mental health. 

With enough public support, we could expand our services to support ongoing clinical research supporting women and trauma, the development of group therapies so that more individuals can be served economically, and emergency trauma response on a global scale.

IF/WHEN we are able to connect women across the globe to legalized psychedelic therapies, there is still much work to be done in advance of that legalization. Help us provide trauma education so that we continue to destigmatize PTSD. We need far more awareness of Complex PTSD and Dissociative PTSD. We must continue to identify the systemic barriers to effective therapy for women across the globe. We must help marginalized populations share access to these emerging therapies, as well. You can help us make the changes necessary to support the global impact of trauma.