What it is
CIIS created the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research in 2015 and describes it as "the first-ever university-affiliated psychedelics certificate program." The first cohort — 41 students — graduated on 4 December 2016. CIIS says the certificate has now trained "over 1,700 professionals," which makes it by a wide margin the longest-running and highest-volume program of its kind in the United States. Founding director Dr. Janis Phelps still runs it.
The year is eight class weekends between October and May, plus two required virtual pre-program sessions in late summer (Orientation, and a separate class on Ethics, Safety, and Legalities in the Field). CIIS publishes 140–150 hours of instruction — roughly 150 for the hybrid San Francisco cohort, 140 for the online cohort — plus 30 hours of individualized learning and mentor consultation and an estimated 120 hours of reading, which the FAQ translates to 6–8 hours a week. The hybrid cohort meets in person in San Francisco for three four-day weekends (Thursday afternoon through Sunday lunchtime) and online for five Saturdays; the online cohort does the same calendar entirely by video conference, with the January in-person Holotropic Breathwork weekend available as a $600 add-on. Everyone takes a final exam. Trainees are placed in "Home Groups" of 7–9 for the whole year and assigned a mentor.
The content is weighted toward the two drugs furthest through FDA review — CIIS says the program "thoroughly covers clinical work with MDMA and psilocybin with additional coursework on ketamine-assisted psychotherapy" — which is precisely the mismatch a working California clinician needs to understand before paying. Of the three, only ketamine is prescribable in the US today. The experiential component of the training is Holotropic Breathwork, guided imagery, self-hypnosis, expressive artwork, drumming and rattling inductions, and role-plays drawn from real psychedelic therapy sessions. No psychedelic drug is administered to students at any point, and CIIS states this explicitly in its own materials.
Eligibility widened substantially in 2025. It is no longer a licensed-clinician-only program: CIIS now accepts applicants with an advanced degree or graduate study in non-clinical fields (social sciences, humanities, sciences, law and others) and applicants holding only a bachelor's degree in those fields. CIIS's own announcement says non-clinical participants are being trained to be "secondary support as facilitators in required two-person dyads during psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions." Licensed and ordained professionals — the list explicitly includes LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and psychologists — remain the "prioritized" tier. Residents of twelve states (including DC, New Jersey, North Carolina, Minnesota and Wisconsin) cannot enroll at all, for state-authorization reasons.
See it and hear it
What it lets you do
This is the section the program’s own marketing is least specific about, so it runs before everything else. It was established against the program’s own materials and against the two state registers that matter — Oregon’s approved-curriculum list and Colorado’s.
- Keep practicing exactly as you already do. Nothing about your BBS license, your scope of practice, your supervision obligations or your title changes. This is a credential issued by a university, not by a regulator; the California Board of Behavioral Sciences neither requires it nor recognizes it as conferring anything.
- Do psychedelic integration work — preparation and, more commonly, after-the-fact psychotherapy with clients who have used psychedelics on their own. This is the single most immediately usable outcome, and the honest framing is that it needs no special credential at all: it is ordinary psychotherapy. What the certificate buys here is competence and referral credibility, not permission. CIIS frames it exactly this way, saying graduates gain "an enhanced ability to serve people in our culture who have used psychedelics."
- Work as the therapist on a ketamine-assisted psychotherapy team. Ketamine is the only psychedelic-adjacent medicine a California therapist can be part of administering today, because it is an FDA-approved anaesthetic prescribed off-label. CIIS teaches ketamine pharmacology, therapeutic interventions, drug interactions and "strategies for creating a ketamine clinic," and gives trainees a list of further ketamine trainings that do include an experiential component. In May 2026 CIIS opened its own university-affiliated KAP clinic in San Francisco (three-hour sessions at roughly $400), staffed in part by CPTR graduates.
- Claim up to 30 hours of continuing education acceptable to the California BBS, for an extra $50–80 per weekend. CE is provided by the Spiritual Competency Academy, an APA-approved sponsor; the BBS accepts APA-approved-sponsor CE for LMFT, LCSW, LPCC and LEP renewal. Up to 10 hours of CME is separately available.
- Be a materially more credible applicant to psychedelic clinics, trial sites and research teams. CIIS claims graduates have been chosen as study therapists by Heffter, MAPS and Usona researchers — that is CIIS's claim, and CIIS itself qualifies it as "dependent on the unfolding regulatory processes, the attainment of protocol-specific training, and the available number of therapist researcher positions."
- Optionally, and only by paying more and traveling: apply for an Oregon psilocybin facilitator license. CIIS is a genuinely OHA-approved training program (Training Program ID #TP-ce7dd84c), independently confirmed on the Oregon Health Authority's public approved-programs list on 6 August 2026 — one of 15 programs listed. That requires completing the optional Oregon subcohort's 40 in-person hours in Portland and passing a CIIS Oregon exam. Oregon licenses non-residents, so a California LMFT can hold this license — but all psilocybin work must be done at an OHA-licensed service center in Oregon.
- Teach, write, present, consult, screen, and refer knowledgeably — the ordinary professional dividends of a year of structured study with the people who ran the trials.
- Cannot administer, supply, sit with, or in any way provide psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca, or any other Schedule I psychedelic in California. Both psilocybin and MDMA remain Schedule I federally as of August 2026 and neither is approved by the FDA. California has repeatedly declined to build a therapeutic framework: SB 58 was vetoed in 2023, SB 1012 was pulled in 2024, and a Senate committee killed SB 751's veterans/first-responder psilocybin pilot in May 2025. The one psychedelics bill Newsom did sign in October 2025 (sponsored by Asm. Christopher Ward) only lets California's Research Advisory Panel review Schedule I research proposals faster — it changes nothing about clinical practice.
- Cannot prescribe or administer ketamine. In KAP the therapist is not the prescriber; a physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant prescribes and is responsible for the medical side. This certificate does not change that and does not give you any medication authority.
- Does not expand your BBS scope of practice, does not shorten or substitute for any part of the California licensure path, and does not entitle you to any protected new title. "Psychedelic-assisted therapist" is not a regulated credential in California.
- Does not qualify you to facilitate in Colorado. CIIS does not appear on Colorado DORA's list of Approved Natural Medicine Training Programs — verified 6 August 2026 against the 16 programs then listed (which do include Fluence, Numinus, InnerTrek, Changa Institute, Entheogen Institute, CU Denver's Center for Psychedelic Research and others). A Colorado facilitator license would require enrolling in a different, Colorado-approved program.
- The base certificate on its own does not qualify you for Oregon either. Without the optional Oregon subcohort, the additional 40 in-person hours in Portland and the CIIS Oregon exam, an Oregon facilitator license application is not available to you.
- Does not by itself make you a clinical-trial study therapist. Sponsors set their own protocol-specific training requirements; CIIS says so in its own outcomes language.
- Does not include any legal psychedelic experience for the student. CIIS provides none, and says so: the experiential curriculum is Holotropic Breathwork, guided imagery, self-hypnosis, expressive artwork, drumming and rattling, and role-play. If you want a legal personal psychedelic session, this program is not where you get one — CIIS instead hands out a list of other trainings that include an experiential component.
- Does not make you eligible to enroll at all if you live in one of twelve restricted states (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, DC, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Wisconsin) — a state-authorization limit, not a scope limit, but a hard bar.
- Does not confer academic credit toward a degree. It is a non-degree professional certificate; CIIS notes elsewhere that Continuing Education Units are not transferable as academic credit.
It is important to note that at no time does the program promote or require the use of psychedelic drugs in any manner, in accordance with the CIIS Student Handbook and CIIS Academic Catalog policies, as well as state and federal law. Trainees taking the certificate will learn about the competencies required of therapists (licensed clinicians) and facilitators (unlicensed trained professionals) in federally approved medical treatment and psychedelic research, as well as key aspects of guidelines in decriminalized states and regions.— California Institute of Integral Studies — Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research (CPTR), in its own materials
Why the answer is this narrow →
Cost, length and who can apply
What you would study
- Module 1 — Research Foundations and Current Trends
Resurgence in Research: Psychedelic-Assisted and Entactogen-Assisted Therapy; Pharmacology and Neuroscience; Legal Issues and Regulatory Processes; Contemporary Clinical Research on Classic Psychedelics, MDMA and Ketamine; Current Trends and Controversies.
source ↗ - Module 2 — Practices for Transformation of Consciousness
Sacraments, Indigenous Wisdom Traditions, and Mystical Experiences; Psychedelics and Entactogens: Community, Spirituality, and Wellness; Studies of Consciousness; Group Ceremonial Traditions.
source ↗ - Module 3 — The Facilitator/Therapist: Core, Cultural and Ethical Competencies
Core Competencies and Healing Presence of Facilitator; Cultural Competency, Cultural Humility, and Structural Competency; Access and Equity in Psychedelic Healthcare and Research for Diverse Populations and Under-Resourced Communities; Ethics, Safety Issues, and Support Skills.
source ↗ - Module 4 — Therapeutic Processes
Group and Individual Formats; Meaning Making: Preparation; Psychedelic Session; Integration: Practices and Goals.
source ↗ - Module 5 — Experience of Guiding and Being Guided in Expanded States of Consciousness
Holotropic Breathwork; Guided Imagery, Expressive Artwork, and Self-Hypnosis; Role-Play Exercises from Actual Psychedelic Therapy Sessions; Drumming and Rattling Inductions. This is the program's entire experiential component — none of it involves a drug.
source ↗ - Module 6 — Mentoring Program
Mentor–Trainee Consultation: each trainee works with a mentor for the duration of the program. CIIS describes mentors as "advanced practitioners with clinical, facilitation, and/or research expertise," and the FAQ specifies 30 hours of individualized learning and mentor consultation, with trainees meeting their mentor at least monthly. Professional development discussions, role plays and networking.
source ↗ - Required cross-cutting sessions (not numbered as modules)
A mandatory virtual Trainee Orientation and a separate mandatory three-hour class on "Ethics, Safety, and Legalities in the Field," both held before the program proper begins. A final exam at the end of the year: "By passing the exam, trainees will demonstrate competence and understanding of important concepts in the field of psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapies."
source ↗ - Optional Oregon subcohort (additional cost, additional travel)
40 hours of in-person instruction in Portland, Oregon: didactic training, observation of psilocybin sessions with groups or individuals supervised by senior certified facilitators, and consultation work at CIIS-approved Oregon licensed service centers. Followed by a CIIS Oregon exam. Only this track leads to an Oregon facilitator license application.
source ↗
Who teaches it
Faculty is a large part of what these programs actually sell, and it changes between cohorts — check the current list before you decide on this basis.
- Dr. Janis Phelps — founder (2015) and still Director of the Center. A CIIS clinical psychology professor before founding it; she is the person most associated with the program publicly (quoted in the NYT, National Geographic, NPR, the WSJ and CapRadio on the Center's behalf) and she authored the widely cited framing of psychedelic therapist 'core competencies'.
- Laura Pustarfi — Executive Director of Certificates and Continuing Education (administrative lead across CIIS certificates).
- Kelson Pamarang — Assistant Director of Admissions for Certificate Programs; the named admissions contact and the person whose Calendly the site links for prospective-student meetings.
- Michael Mithoefer, M.D. and Annie Mithoefer, B.S.N. — the husband-and-wife team who ran MAPS' MDMA-assisted therapy trials and largely wrote the MDMA therapy protocol. On the faculty since the earliest cohorts.
- Rick Doblin, Ph.D. — founder of MAPS; the central political figure of the modern MDMA effort, including its 2024 FDA rejection.
- William A. Richards, Ph.D. and Brian D. Richards, Psy.D. — Johns Hopkins psilocybin researchers; Bill Richards is one of the few people who worked with psychedelics both before and after prohibition and wrote 'Sacred Knowledge'.
- Anthony P. Bossis, Ph.D. — NYU; ran the psilocybin/end-of-life-anxiety trials, and the CIIS faculty member NPR featured in its 2023 story on chaplains entering the field.
- Charles Grob, M.D. — UCLA; ran the first modern US psilocybin cancer-anxiety study.
- Jeffrey Guss, M.D. — NYU psychiatrist, a prominent voice on psychedelic therapy ethics and on the therapeutic relationship.
- David E. Nichols, Ph.D. — medicinal chemist, founder of the Heffter Research Institute; effectively the field's pharmacology authority.
- Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D. — Mount Sinai; leading PTSD and trauma-biology researcher.
- Mary Cosimano, M.S.W. — Johns Hopkins; has guided more psilocybin sessions than almost anyone alive.
- Dennis McKenna, Ph.D. — ethnopharmacologist, ayahuasca researcher.
- Dr. Beatriz (Bia) Caiuby Labate — anthropologist, executive director of Chacruna; the main academic critic-within-the-field on Indigenous reciprocity and appropriation.
- Raquel Bennett, Psy.D. — founder of KRIYA Institute; one of the longest-standing ketamine-psychotherapy specialists in the US, and directly relevant to the only modality a California LMFT can practice now.
- Diane Haug, M.A., LPCC — senior Grof Transpersonal Training facilitator; leads the Holotropic Breathwork weekend.
- Torsten Passie, M.D. — German psychiatrist and historian of psychedelic medicine.
- Devon Christie, M.D. — Canadian physician, Numinus; MDMA and ketamine clinical training.
- Charles Raison, M.D.; Peter Hendricks, Ph.D.; Stephen J. Haggarty, Ph.D.; Franklin King IV, M.D.; Albert Yeung, M.D. — academic research faculty (Wisconsin, UAB, Harvard/MGH).
- Andrew Penn, M.S., PMHNP; Julie D. Megler, NP; Kwasi Adusei, DNP, PMHNP — psychiatric nurse practitioners, i.e. the prescriber side of a KAP team.
- Courtney Watson, LMFT; Urana Jackson; Shirley Strong; Sizwe Andrews-Abakah; Mizan Alkebulan-Abakah; Ayize Jama-Everett — faculty associated with the program's access, equity and Beloved Community strand. Phelps says one third of instructors and mentors are people of color.
- Kile Ortigo, Ph.D. — psychedelic integration specialist, author of 'Beyond the Narrow Life'.
- Anja Loizaga-Velder, Ph.D.; Susana Bustos, Ph.D.; Gogo Ekhaya; Dawn D. Davis — Indigenous and traditional-practice strand.
- Also listed: Brian Anderson, Anthony Back, Yvan Beaussant, Christopher M. Bache, Nicholas V. Cozzi, Rajan Dunne, Robert M. Grant, George Greer, Mariavittoria Mangini, Mary McDermott, Natalie Metz, Dominique Morisano, Patricia James, Robert Koffman, Robert C. Strayhan, Mary K. Sanders, Zach Skiles, Jan Edl Stein, Chanda Williams, Keith Williams, Silvia Nakkach (adjunct). Full roster: 52 named teaching faculty.
What people say about it
Quoted with the source attached in every case, including the program’s own claims about itself — which are labeled as such — and the critical ones.
Where it stands right now
Not currently enrolling. Verified 6 August 2026: the program page states "Applications for the 2026-2027 cohort are now closed. Our 2027-2028 application cycle will open on January 15, 2027." The 2026–27 cohort runs 8 October 2026 – 23 May 2027, with required virtual sessions on 22 August and 19 September 2026. Note that the same page contradicts itself further down, in the tuition section, saying "The 2026-2027 application cycle is open through July 13, 2026" — a stale line; the banner is the operative one.
What I could not establish
These are the things I looked for and could not establish. Take them to the program, and notice how quickly and precisely they answer.
- THE VIDEO THE SITE OWNER SUPPLIED IS THE WRONG ONE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OozCl_m-Fi8 is 'Integral Counseling Psychology at CIIS | A Mind, Body, Spirit Approach to Therapy' — a different CIIS program entirely, nothing to do with psychedelics. Verified via YouTube's oEmbed API on 6 August 2026. Replaced with the Janis Phelps CPTR video above.
- No applicant numbers, seat count, or acceptance rate is published anywhere. The program's reputation for being heavily oversubscribed could not be confirmed from any source. The only hard cohort figure found is Phelps' 'we've grown from 45 students to as many as 300' and the 7–9-person Home Group size. If the directory wants to claim it is competitive, that claim currently has no citable basis.
- No deposit figure is published for this certificate. CIIS lists enrollment deposits for degree programs ($125 undergraduate, $300–500 graduate) but not for CPTR; the certificate instead uses 'first tuition payment secures your space,' due within three weeks of the admission offer.
- The exact terms of the one-payment vs. three-payment plan (amounts, dates, whether interest or fees apply) are only in a gated 'Information Packet' that requires submitting a Request Info form. Not obtainable without giving CIIS contact details.
- No current BIPOC- or equity-specific scholarship is published. CIIS' present offering is a single partial, need-based scholarship allocated first-come, first-served on a 1-page financial-need statement (deadline 1 June 2026, decisions rolling through 15 August 2026), with more than $1.4 million dispersed since 2016. There WAS a named diversity fund: on 22 March 2017 CIIS announced $32,750 for scholarships for trainees 'from underrepresented communities,' including $15,000 from the Sarlo Foundation establishing the 'Ricci Coddington Diversity Scholarships,' plus full-tuition gifts from trustee Betsy Gordon and Robert Barnhart. That fund does not appear in any current tuition or scholarship material, and CIIS does not say whether it still exists.
- The Boston training site is unaccounted for. CIIS opened it in 2021 and the 2025–26 tuition table still reads 'Hybrid Boston and San Francisco Cohorts,' but the 2026–27 schedule offers only San Francisco hybrid and online. CIIS does not say whether Boston has been discontinued.
- No completion rate, final-exam pass rate, or post-certificate employment data is published — only anecdotes from the director.
- No independent student reviews found. Reddit and Trustpilot are blocked from this environment, and no journalism reviewing the certificate from a student's perspective surfaced. Every evaluative quote available about this program is either from CIIS itself or from CIIS quoting someone.
- The independent 'Psychedelics/Therapy Assessment Group' audit CIIS announced in April 2022 has no published findings. CIIS said to 'look for updates in the coming months'; four years on, none were found.
- YouTube upload dates, durations and descriptions could not be retrieved (rate-limited); titles and channel ownership were verified via oEmbed.
Sources for this page (20)
- CIIS — About the Certificate (tuition, schedule, curriculum, eligibility, outcomes, disclaimers)
- CIIS — Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research (landing)
- CIIS — About the Center (history, 1,700+ graduates, Boston 2021 / Oregon 2024, Cohen Foundation grant, 2025 eligibility expansion)
- CIIS — CPTR FAQ (time commitment, Home Groups, mentorship hours, Oregon subcohort, media coverage list)
- CIIS — CPTR Teachers and staff (52 named faculty)
- CIIS — Tuition and Fees (2025–26 vs 2026–27 certificate pricing, payment options, enrollment deposits, CE fees)
- CIIS News — Psychedelic Therapy Training Program Expands Eligibility (non-clinical track; 'secondary support as facilitators in required two-person dyads')
- CIIS News — A Decade of Psychedelic Education (Phelps interview: 45→300 students, 130 international trainees, one third of instructors people of color, Oregon approval, 3,000 waiting in Oregon)
- CIIS News — CIIS Pioneers Training Professionals for Psychedelic Medicine Studies, 30 Nov 2016 (first 41 graduates, 4 December 2016)
- CIIS News — Important News about Psychedelics at CIIS, 14 Apr 2022 (President Blomberg on reporting about CIIS; independent assessment announced)
- CIIS News — CIIS Opens Nation's First University-Affiliated Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Clinic, 14 May 2026 (~$400 per three-hour session; staffed partly by CPTR graduates)
- CIIS News — CIIS Receives Funding for CPTR Scholarships, 22 Mar 2017 (Ricci Coddington Diversity Scholarships, $32,750 total)
- CIIS News — Center Leads National Conversation on Standards in Psychedelic Care, 9 Dec 2025
- CIIS News — Why Tech Workers Are Seeking Psychedelic Integration Therapy, 9 Dec 2025 (WSJ coverage, CPTR graduate Denise Renye)
- Oregon Health Authority — approved psilocybin training programs, public list (CIIS present; verified 6 Aug 2026 via the OHA public API behind this page)
- Oregon Health Authority — Psilocybin Training Program Approval
- Colorado DORA — Natural Medicine: Approved Natural Medicine Training Programs (CIIS absent; verified 6 Aug 2026)
- Executive Order 14401, 'Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness', signed 18 Apr 2026 (directs rescheduling REVIEW after successful Phase 3 and FDA approval — it reschedules nothing itself)
- Marijuana Moment — California Governor Signs Bill To Expedite Marijuana And Psychedelics Research, Oct 2025 (and notes the Senate committee declining the SB 751 psilocybin pilot)
- YouTube oEmbed verification of video titles/channel