Abstract

The integration phase of psychedelic-assisted therapy remains the one of the least understood. Meanwhile new statistical methods are emerging to analyze high-density longitudinal data in the service of attempting to understand causal processes. Data was collected from 33 participants undergoing a Psilocybin-assisted ACT-informed retreat that consisted of 2 psychedelic experiences during a 4.5 day period. Participants were encouraged to lean into emotionally painful self-as-content such as shame and were then supported with ACT therapy post-retreat. 

This presentation will detail psychedelic-assisted case studies include successful treatments of social anxiety, severe depression and long-term childhood trauma. We will consider detailed participant accounts as well as day-to-day quantitative changes in psychological flexibility, negative emotion, personality, and life satisfaction. It will also detail precisely how an ACT-consistent therapeutic intervention can be tailored to deepen and build on the life changing effects of psychedelics. 

Using a new network analysis method for high-density longitudinal data (Subgrouping Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (S-GIMME)), we analysed data collected from our participants before during and after a psychedelic retreat, including 1-3months of ACT informed integration therapy.  Analyses were run using 6 nodes at 24hr intervals over an average of 2 months, with 16 participants (980 data points). Data-driven subgrouping and uSEM analysis revealed network models for each member of our sample which collapsed into two subgroups. Statistically significant models were found at group-level, showing predictive causal relationships between personality, negative emotions, life satisfaction and openness. We will consider how these relate to client accounts (from qualitative interviews), how these latter can inform the development of our psychedelic integration models, as well as future research questions. 

This study also provides data on the performance of multiple measures longitudinally during psychedelic integration, namely the: Valuing Questionaire (Smout, 2014) – measured weekly, Brief Acceptance Measure (Gillanders, unpublished) – measured daily, 3D – Reno Inventory of Self Perspective for tracking changes – tracking changes in the conceptualised self (Jeffcoat, 2015) – measured weekly.