Raymond Bakaitis, Ph.D. – Discussion Leader. Psychologist in Independent Practice; President, Grex, the West Coast Affiliate of the A. K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems; Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology (Retired), U.C.L.A. Department of Psychology; Past-President, Los Angeles County Psychological Association.
Thomas M Brod MD – Coordinator/Presenter. Dr. Brod is Sr. Faculty at New Center for Psychoanalysis and is in private practice in Los Angeles. He is Associate Clinical Professor, Psychiatry, Geffen UCLA School of Medicine and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He has been organizing conferences on Self-Regulation and Intensive Dynamic Psychotherapy since 1982; he also chaired the first modern Symposium on psyilocybin at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in 2006.
Lara Edinger, DO MS – Presenter is double-Board Certified as a neurologist and pain managemen t, specializing in the treatment of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). She is a pioneer in the field of ketamine infusion for pain. Dr. Edinger served as chief resident at Drexel University College of Medicine under Dr. Robert Schwartzman, a pioneer in the use of ketamine for the treatment of chronic pain. As a fellow at UVA, she developed new ketamine protocols. She has partnered with psychiatrists for treatment of depression with ketamine. She is the owner and director of Edinger Pain Management . She is Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology, Geffen UCLA School of Medicine.
Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD -Video presentation, from BTCI Conference May 16, 2019- Head, Centre for Psychedelic Research Imperial College, London. His PhD is in Psychopharmacology and he has a MA in Psychoanalysis. He has designed and/or carried out human brain imaging studies with a variety of psychedelic compounds, plus a clinical trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, and a current study comparing psilocybin with escitalopram for major depressive disorder.
David J Laramie, PhD -Discussion leader- is a health psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills and at the Akasha Center in Santa Monica. In his work, he is particularly focused on integrative approaches to health and wellness.
Scott Shannon, MD – Faculty, Featured Speaker. Dr. Shannon founded Wholeness Center, in Fort Collins, in 2010. This innovative clinic provides cross-disciplinary evaluation and care for all mental health concerns. Scott serves as a site Principle Investigator and therapist for the Phase III trial of MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD sponsored by Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He has also published numerous articles about his research on cannabidiol (CBD) in mental health. Currently, Scott works extensively with ketamine-assisted-psychotherapy. He lectures all over the world to professional groups interested in a deeper look at mental health issues, safer tools and a paradigm shifting perspective about transformative care.
Scott has been a student of consciousness since his honor’s thesis on that topic at the University of Arizona in the 1970s under the tutelage of Andrew Weil. Following medical school, Scott studied Jungian therapy and acupuncture while working as a primary care physician in a rural area for four years. MDMA assisted psychotherapy became a facet of his practice before this medicine was scheduled in 1985. He then completed a Psychiatry residency at Columbia program in New York. Scott studied cross-cultural psychiatry and completed a child/adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the University of New Mexico.
Scott has published four books on holistic mental health including the first integrative psychiatry textbook for this field in 2001. His pediatric mental health textbook was published in 2014. Scott is a past President of the American Holistic Medical Association and a past President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.
Scott offers the following introduction to his thinking for this conference:
“What does it mean to manifest mind?
“Psychiatry may be witnessing the beginning of a true paradigm shift. Psychotherapy and psychopharmacology have battled for preeminence in the mental health sphere. Unfortunately, these two tools often function at odds with each other. Recently, we have witnessed a novel synergy between these two treatment approaches. MDMA, psilocybin and ketamine offer a dramatically new vision of what medication assisted psychotherapy may look like. Sophisticated neuroimaging has begun to offer a window into how these treatments alter brain function and thus conscious experience and the processing of the therapeutic encounter. Clinical research indicates that transformational change may be enhanced and long-term outcomes altered. For much of the past 70 years psychopharmacology has been in a suppressive mode trying to reduce and manage symptoms, but often at a cost of impaired awareness. In this new paradigm, psychiatry explores an evocative approach to the manifesting the mind. This presentation will briefly explore the research around medication assisted psychotherapy and use that as a jumping off point to explore consciousness, the therapeutic relationship and the nature of transformational change. “
