Marcela Ot'alora - MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy and Therapeutic Humility

Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Mad in America

Mental Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 212 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Marcela Ot'alora works with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as the principal investigator for government research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. In addition to her role as principal investigator, she also worked as a co-therapist during earlier phases of MDMA psychotherapy research and currently leads the MDMA therapy training for MAPS. Ms. Ot'alora also works as a therapist using both ketamine and fine arts to treat trauma.

Ot'alora approaches her work with a humility learned from years of therapeutic experience: "My clients and the participants in our studies have taught me that their healing looks so different than anything I could have imagined. If I come in leaving that agenda, leaving that bias aside, and being present with whoever is in front of me, they will surprise me every time about how healing works for them."

In this interview, we discuss her research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and how the use of MDMA differs from more traditional substances such as antidepressants. We will also discuss ketamine-assisted therapy, the therapeutic use of fine arts, and the over-prescription of psychiatric drugs.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.
0:13.5	Welcome to the Madden America podcast. I'm Richard Sears, science writer for Madden America, here today with Marcella Otholera.
0:22.9	Ms. Otholera works with the Multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies as the principal investigator for government
0:27.6	research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. She also worked as a co-therapist during the first
0:33.2	phase of MDMA research and currently leads the MDMA therapy training for maps. In addition to
0:39.4	her research, Ms. Otala works as a therapist utilizing fine arts in the treatment of trauma.
0:45.9	Welcome, Ms. Otala and thank you for making time to talk with us today. Thank you.
0:50.4	So I'm wondering if we could start by you just telling us a little bit about what brought you to your work, both as like a therapist and artist and also what drew you towards your interest in psychedelics and MDMA.
1:04.4	Yes. So I started first as an artist and I still am. And mostly I think I came to that from having dyslexia and not being
1:13.9	able to understand things in the way that I felt that others could understand it and I had I really
1:19.4	struggled with it and art was a way for me to really communicate and to be able to feel like I could
1:26.4	express myself in that way.
1:28.6	So that's how I came to art.
1:31.4	And in terms of psychedelics was doing my own healing with psychedelics, with MDMA assisted
1:39.3	therapy specifically, and just realizing how profound that was and how it changed the trajectory of my life.
1:47.6	And I wanted to be able to work towards making this accessible for other people.
1:53.0	So it started then, so 37 years ago in that process of really wanting to bring this to where it is today or more, like, where it's going to be maybe in a couple of years.
2:08.6	So I'm wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about the research that you have been doing with Maps.
2:13.6	I know there were, I believe, three phases, phase one, two, and three. And just kind of what were you guys doing in general? What were you investigating? And what did you find? So the first investigations were mostly phase one about safety, right? And what populations to use and animal studies.
2:34.6	And I wasn't a part of that.
2:36.5	So I came in in the phase two studies.
2:39.4	We did a phase two study in Boulder and mostly to work with to investigate safety, continue
	...

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