Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy & Integration Training

What it is

PCH is the smallest and most concentrated of these three. It is not a year-long curriculum; it is a residential training week in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles with a virtual cohort meeting before and after. The premise is experiential: 'Experiential sessions with ketamine will allow participants to practice ketamine-assisted therapy and become effective facilitators in integration.' Each participant gets time as the person in the non-ordinary state and time as the person holding the space. PCH describes its pacing as the point: 'Our ethos is slow and spacious'; 'We are shifting out of the traditional model of speed and hyper-productivity in favor of sustained, unhurried learning with lasting impact.'

The balance is roughly: clinical and pharmacological grounding (research history, current protocols, psychopharmacology, dosing and medical safety); core competencies (preparation, set and setting, facilitation, integration, plus transpersonal, IFS, somatic and ACT frames, and music playlist curation); direct ketamine experience with harm-reduction essentials; an integration block the program treats as its distinguishing emphasis, listed literally as 'Integration Integration Integration'; and a professional-development block covering practice management, legal and insurance issues, and ethics. There are master classes across ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT and ibogaine — education about substances the training does not, and cannot, license you to use.

Tuition is published, which is more than SoundMind does: $5,000 for mental health professionals, $6,000 for physicians, with a need-based, equity-informed scholarship. An earlier, still-visible block on the same page shows $4,000 / $5,000 / $1,500 scholarship for the October 2021 cohort. Tuition explicitly excludes accommodation, meals and CEs; the retreat center costs a further $1,350–$2,100 for five nights all-inclusive with three meals a day, and accommodation is 'all but required'. The PCH Virtual Symposium is included and required. CE is up to 50 credits for the in-person training, sponsored by the Spiritual Competency Academy, which is APA-approved — and PCH states directly that 'The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CE credits for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association.' That checks out against the BBS's own list of recognized approval agencies.

The awkward part: as of 6 August 2026 the site says 'applications CLOSED', 'New cohort date TBD', shows 'DATE TBA' and 'DATE TBD' everywhere a date should be, and carries a 2022 copyright line in the footer. The only live-looking element is a merchandise link. PCH was founded by two Los Angeles clinicians, Lauren Taus, LCSW and Nicholas Brüss, EdD, LMFT — Brüss was a co-therapist on the MAPS Phase 3 MDMA trial in Los Angeles and has provided KAP since 2017 — and the training's design clearly reflects their own practices. But treat this as a paused program unless you contact them and get a date.

The program’s own page →

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.

The PCH training is designed for clinically licensed professionals to develop the core competencies necessary to provide psychedelic-assisted therapy and integration. We will prepare you to practice ketamine-assisted therapy, support you in building a team of professionals to work with to provide more integrative treatment for clients/patients, and a kinder relationship with work. This training helps prepare you for working with MDMA and psilocybin in therapy when these consciousness tools are legally available. This training also builds competency and confidence to practice as a psychedelic integration specialist for clients. We support following the outcomes of validated research, and upholding the laws of the country in which you reside.— Psychedelic Coalition for Health (PCH), in its own materials

Why the answer is this narrow →

Cost, length and who can apply

cost source ↗

What you would study

1. Cutting-Edge Psychedelic Medicine Science & Research

   History of psychedelic research; current psychedelic-assisted research protocols; psychopharmacology of psychoactive medicines; dosing protocols and medical safety.

   source ↗
2. Core Competencies of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy

   Preparation, set and setting, facilitation and integration; foundational therapeutic principles including transpersonal, Internal Family Systems, somatic and ACT approaches; how to be with non-ordinary states of consciousness; music playlist development, rationale and curation.

   source ↗
3. Direct Experience of Ketamine-assisted Therapy & Integration

   Essentials of harm reduction; KAP preparation, set and setting, facilitation; 'Safe and legal experiences with ketamine'; 'Time and space to learn in a non-ordinary state of consciousness'. This is the experiential core — participants take ketamine and also practice sitting for others.

   source ↗
4. Integration Integration Integration / Psychedelic-Informed Integrative and Collaborative Approach

   Integrative tools for eliciting transformative experiences; medications and nutritional supplements for optimal mental health; maintaining lifestyle changes; mind-body practices to support integration. PCH describes integration as what makes its training unusual and builds schedule space around it.

   source ↗
5. Expansive Personal and Professional Development

   Practice management issues — legal, insurance, safety; ethics in psychedelic-assisted therapy; community building and professional connections. The training also asks participants to 'Understand political and clinical controversies in the field'.

   source ↗
6. Master classes (substance-specific)

   Ketamine, MDMA, Psilocybin, Ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, Ibogaine — taught as education about the compounds and their contexts. Only the ketamine content maps onto anything a California clinician can practice.

   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.

• Lauren Taus, LCSW — co-founder and lead trainer; Los Angeles psychotherapist; trained by MAPS for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for complex PTSD and by Dr Phil Wolfson in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy; long background in trauma-sensitive yoga, studied with David Emerson under Bessel van der Kolk's supervision at the Trauma Institute in Boston.
• Nicholas Brüss, EdD, LMFT — co-founder and lead trainer, and the reason this program is legible to an LMFT reader: he holds the same license. Trained as a psychedelic therapist by MAPS and served as a co-therapist on the MAPS-sponsored FDA Phase III MDMA-assisted therapy trial for PTSD in Los Angeles. Has provided KAP since 2017, certified IFS therapist since 2015, Clinical Director of Psychedelic Therapies at Hope Integrative Psychiatry, Zendo Project volunteer, Certified Mindfulness Facilitator through UCLA's MARC and a certified CCT teacher through Stanford's CCARE.
• David Lukoff, PhD — named as the CE contact via the Spiritual Competency Academy, the APA-approved sponsor for the program's psychologist CE.
• PCH states the training is 'unique in its commitment to share with its participants a variety of techniques and perspectives by clinicians that use them', but does not publish a roster of guest faculty for the in-person training.

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

Paused / Unknown. Verified 6 August 2026: the training page states 'Applications ARE currently closed. New cohort date TBD', all dates render as 'DATE TBA' or 'DATE TBD', the homepage carousel still advertises an 'OCTOBER 2021 • LOS ANGELES, CA' cohort, and every page footer reads '© 2022 | Psychedelic Coalition for Health'. I found no announcement of a 2023–2026 cohort and no news coverage of PCH after 2021. Source: https://www.psychedeliccoalitionforhealth.com/training. Contact PCH directly before treating this as an option.

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.

• No current cohort dates, and no statement anywhere about whether the program is on hiatus or has ended.
• Two conflicting CE figures — 50 CEs on the continuing education page, 'up to 60 CE' in the site-wide footer — with no reconciliation and no breakdown of how the credits are allocated across the week.
• No total contact-hour count for the training itself.
• Two conflicting tuition blocks left live on the same page ($5,000/$6,000 and $4,000/$5,000/$1,500), with no indication which applies to a future cohort.
• The cost of CEs is excluded from tuition but never stated.
• No published guest faculty list for the in-person training, despite the marketing emphasis on a 'variety of techniques and perspectives by clinicians that use them'.
• No refund or cancelation policy for the training — the published policies page covers only the Symposium.
• No published screening or medical-eligibility criteria for the participant ketamine sessions, and no statement of who prescribes and supervises them on site. For a training whose core is participants taking a scheduled drug, this is the most significant omission.
• No cohort size published.
• No verified YouTube video about this specific training. Videos featuring Nicholas Brüss exist (e.g. a Yale Psychedelic Science Group talk on psychedelic-assisted IFS) but are about his clinical work, not about PCH, so none is included here.
• No independent coverage or reviews found. Google News returned nothing for PCH or its founders; Reddit and Trustpilot returned 403 from this environment.

Where to go next