![featured image](https://psychedelicstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/PT529-Sara-Reed-Alex-H.-Robinson.jpg)
Training
Difficult Conversations, the Need for Culturally Competent Care, and Why Representation Matters
July 12, 2024
Featuring: Sara Reed & Alex H. Robinson
In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, David interviews Sara Reed: Vital instructor, lecturer, and lead psychedelic research therapist at Imperial College London; and Alex H. Robinson: Vital student, integration coach and psilocybin facilitator for Heroic Hearts Project, and distinguished Army SOF combat Veteran with a decade of active duty service.
![featured image](https://psychedelicstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/PT529-Sara-Reed-Alex-H.-Robinson.jpg)
In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, David interviews Sara Reed: Vital instructor, lecturer, and lead psychedelic research therapist at Imperial College London; and Alex H. Robinson: Vital student, integration coach and psilocybin facilitator for Heroic Hearts Project, and distinguished Army SOF combat Veteran with a decade of active duty service.
![](https://psychedelicstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Vital-Web-Banner.png)
Reed has worked with MAPS to make clinical trial populations more diverse and is creating culturally sensitive Clinical Research Forms for future research trials, and Robinson spearheaded her unit’s Cultural Support Team program and contributed to policy changes to help place women into traditionally male-centric Special Operations roles. Representing marginalized groups themselves, they’re both passionate about making psychedelic therapy more inclusive and representative of the general population, and getting more practitioners up to speed to be able to deliver culturally competent care.
They discuss:
- The importance of having difficult conversations and calling out bad behavior
- The fallacy of zero-sum thinking: Doing something special for a smaller community doesn’t take away from the main goal; it adds to it
- The benefit of being able to self-reflect and personalize content when most psychedelic education consists of one-sided lectures
- The challenge of getting people who don’t feel represented to enroll in clinical trials, and how personal stories go a long way
and more!
Links
Psychedelics Today: Sara Reed – Ketamine Therapy Through a Culturally Responsible Lens
YouTube: PT Live: Joe Moore and Alex H. Robinson Discuss the Heroic Hearts Project
PT341 – Racism, Trauma, Research, and Psychedelics, featuring: Monnica Williams, Ph.D.
Researchgate.net: The Cultural Genogram: Key to Training Culturally Competent Family Therapists