Psychedelic Therapy: A Revolutionary Approach to Restoring Your Mental Health and Reclaiming Your Life
Will Van Derveer and Keith Kurlander
Shambhala Publications (May 2026)
An excellent source for those who care for someone who struggles with mental health
As you may already know, psychedelic therapy combines controlled administration of substances like psilocybin or MDMA with psychotherapy to treat mental health conditions like PTSD, depression, and anxiety. It involves carefully prepared, closely supervised 6–8 hour medication sessions, and integration sessions to process insights. It works by altering brain connections and reducing neural excitability to facilitate behavioral changes.
Will Van Derveer and Keith Kurlander explain all this in their book. Its subtitle correctly indicates that the material focuses on “a revolutionary approach to restoring mental health and [thereby] reclaiming life.” The material in this book can be of incalculable value to caregivers to those who struggle with mental health problems, who urgently need help reclaiming their lives.
Many of those who read this book may have no current need of the information, insights, and counsel that Van Derveer and Kurlander provide. Even so, I still recommend it because it addresses a wide range of issues that are worthy of careful consideration. I cannot recall a prior time when people felt lonelier, more out of touch, and less appreciated than they do now. The extent of incivility in the workplace has never been worse.
I often think about “The Serenity Prayer, formulated almost a century ago by Reinhold Niebuhr: “O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.”
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Here are two suggestions while you are reading Psychedelic Therapy: First, highlight key passages. Also, perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand, record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to the last paragraph in each chapter which serves a “head’s up” function, and, material in the Appendix, “Integrative Psychiatry Institute Treatment Road Map.”
These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.