Graduate Courses
Core Coursework
SRS 5108 Foundations of Psychedelic Studies
This course provides an overview of the use of psychedelic drugs for specific mental health applications, including MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine assisted-therapy research. It includes study of diverse cultural and religious traditions in use of psychedelics and the therapeutic and wellness practices they inform.
SRS 5109 Preparation & Integration: Insights Challenges
This course reviews the criminalization of use, possession, and trafficking of psychedelic substances in Canada and globally. Provides a history of drug policies and their origins. It covers harm-reduction issues and public health, with an emphasis on human rights and social concerns.
SRS 5110 Sacred Plant Medicines & Shamanic Practices
This course offers a historical and socio-cultural overview of plant medicine shamanism, ritual, and religion from an anthropological perspective. Current topics include decolonizing psychedelics, pharmacopower, indigenous plant knowledge, plant teachers, and the globalization of ayahuasca.
PSY 6137 Psychedelic Psychotherapies and Mental Health
This course will review the therapeutic uses of psychedelics for mental health and the related research base. Specific topics will include psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies in Western medicine, treatment outcomes, CBT approaches, ethics, and psychedelic group therapies.
PSY 6148/6548 Fieldwork in Indigenous and Cultural Healing Practices
Learn from traditional healers, observe the ritual and ceremonial bases of healing, and examine the uses of entheogens in the process of transformation and spiritual growth. Will include the cultural context of the healing practice, neuropharmacology of serotonergic plant medicines, psychological mechanisms of change, and cultural approaches for self-care. Local and international options.
PSY 6002 Applied Research Practicum
Provides in-person opportunities for students to work with people receiving psychedelics ceremonially or conduct cutting-edge psychedelic research. The program director will facilitate placements from a list of approved sites, or students may select their own training site for review and approval. Students are credited for a total of 100 hours of work on one or several projects related to their area of expertise. More...
PSY 6013 Practicum in Clinical Psychedelics
Provides in-person opportunities for students to work with people receiving psychedelics in clinical settings for mental health practitioners. The program director will facilitate placements from a list of approved sites, or students may select their own training site for review and approval. Students credited for a total of 100 hours.
MRP 6999 Major Research Paper
Students will familiarize themselves with their research area, utilize their research skills at multiple levels, and demonstrate their knowledge of major works in their area as related to a topic in psychedelic studies. More about the MRP and professors taking students
Psychedelic & Consciousness Electives
PSY 6139/6539 Ethics in Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
Explores the ethical dimensions of conducting research and providing care to patients experiencing non-ordinary (altered) states of consciousness, such as those induced by psychedelics. The curriculum covers the foundational principles of research ethics, including historical frameworks, challenges in contemporary studies, and informed consent.
NSC 6101 Consciousness: Interdisciplinary Perspective from Neuroscience, Philosophy, & Psychology
This interdisciplinary course addresses fundamental questions in the study of the mind: 1) What is consciousness? 2) Can we explain the emergence and operation of this central feature of human life by analyzing the brain?
PSY 6138/6538 Neuroscience of Psychedelics
Students learn about the psychopharmacological properties of psychedelic drugs and the relationships between the behavioural effects of psychoactive drugs and their potential mechanisms of action.
BIO 5130 Ethnobotony and Ethnopharmacology
Current perspectives on world ethnobotanies, traditional knowledge, medicinal and food systems, ethical requirements, research methods, the pharmacological basis of traditional drugs, and drug development.
PSY 6191 Seminars in Psychology: Altered / Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness (NOSC)
Emphasizes the phenomenology of psychedelic experiences, subjective experiences, research methods, cultural conceptualizations , evolution of consciousness, mystical states, Buddhist psychology, psychopathology, and neurophysiological processes that facilitate these states.
PSY 6951 Seminar in Neuropharmacology and Behavior: Psychedelic Medicines
Covers topics related to the basic pharmacology of psychedelics, such as their mechanism of action, half-life, and potential adverse events when used in combination with other drugs. Also covers medical emergencies and problems arising from recreational and poly-substance use.
General Elective Courses
SRS 5927 Shamanic Traditions
Provides and anthropological study of shamanic worldviews and trance-based religions, and the associated ritual, therapeutic and artistic practices they inform.
SRS 6900 Comparative Study of Religion: Mysticism
A comparative study of religious mysticism as manifested in diverse cultures.
SRS 6906 Religion & Psychology
Provides an examination of current psychological theories, such as critical and depth psychology, archetypes, comparative mythology, and ego psychology, as they relate to religious studies, consciousness, and psychedelics.
PSY 6115 Evolution of the Mind
Reviews of the historical foundation, concepts and principles associated with the evolution of the human mind. Includes the development of cognitive abilities and social behaviour.
PSY 6134 Mental Health Interview & Psychometrics
Provides skills to conduct clinical interviews in diverse populations, utilize diagnostic classification criteria based on the DSM-5, and understand the construction of psychological measures.
ANT 6112/6512 Medical Anthropology
Epistemologies and practices of health, wellbeing, and disease. Encompasses issues of suffering, embodiment, medical technologies, alternative health practices, wellness movements, mental health, and the cultural construction of medical knowledge.
CMM 5302 Comprehensive Pharmacology I
Extensive coverage of pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, and the pharmacology of the autonomic and central nervous system.
CMM 5303 Comprehensive Pharmacology II
Extensive coverage of the pharmacology of antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drugs, chemotherapeutic agents, and cardiovascular and gastro-intestinal systems.
PSY 6151 Drugs and Behaviour
Course provides a study of current neurochemical and neuropharmacological techniques applicable to the study of normal and pathological behaviour for mental health professionals. A critical evaluation of these techniques as they relate to animal and human behaviour.
Multicultural Learning
Chacruna Institute
Several program faculty participate in this online course being offered by Chacruna Institute on Diversity, Culture and Social Justice in Psychedelics. This is an 8-week course taught by amazing expert leaders in the field.
A pre-requisite for several of the programs in Psychedelics is a graduate level course in Multicultural Psychology, and this course will fill that prerequisite.
If you have ever had an interest in psychedelics and would like to learn more about the social justice and activism aspects of this field, you are encouraged to apply for this course. There are also Continuing Education (CE) credits for practicing therapists who would like to expand their professional focus. Read more about Chacruna Institute psychedelic offerings.
Students will be introduced to basic concepts around psychedelics and justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (JEDI). The goal of the course is to explore the ways in which psychedelics influence and are influenced by factors such as social justice, privilege, and diversity and to better understand their reciprocal influences on psychedelic science, therapies, and praxis.
Prior studies in ethnic and cultual diversity are essential for success.
Topics include:
- implicit bias, queer aspects, intersectionality, and social identity
- cultural humility
- power and privilege
- healing the racial divide
- uses of Indigenous plant medicines
- challenges around mainstreaming and globalization
Diversity, Culture and Social Justice in Psychedelics will be offered during the Winter 2025 semester, every Monday from 10:30am-12pm PST/1:30-3pm EST, January 6th through March 24th. The format of the classes will be as follows: Students will watch a pre-recorded lecture on their own time prior to the zoom meeting. There will then be a live 1.5 hour discussion on zoom with the speaker and students.