Compassionate care is vital for psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) in hospice and palliative settings, as the patient-therapist bond strongly influences positive outcomes. The article reviews evidence for PAT's therapeutic potential in serious illness, defines compassion and compassionate care in healthcare, and links these to essential competencies for psychedelic therapists. It discusses how compassionate care can enhance PAT application in end-of-life contexts and presents implications for research and practice.
After a period of halted research in the 1970s, studies since the 2000s have resumed investigating psychedelic therapies for patients with serious diseases. Psychedelics, classified as classic psychedelics, empathogens, dissociative anaesthetics, and atypical psychedelics, are substances that alter perception, cognition, and emotion and can evoke mystical experiences. In hospice and palliative care, preliminary evidence suggests that assisted psychedelic therapies can profoundly impact psychological, existential, and spiritual outcomes. Controlled psychedelic experiences may help patients turn toward fear of death, reducing anxiety and increasing compassion, acceptance, and present-moment living. A randomized placebo-controlled trial is also underway to evaluate psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for healthcare providers experiencing COVID-19-related depression, anxiety, burnout, and post-traumatic stress.