Graduate Courses
Core Coursework
SRS 5108 Psychedelics Survey of an Emerging Field
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 artistic practices they inform.
SRS 5109 Psychedelics, Politics & Harm Reduction
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 approaches and public health, with an emphasis on human rights and social concerns.
SRS 5110 Sacred Plant Medicines & Spirituality
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 6442 Fieldwork in Psychology: Traditional Uses of Psychedelics
Students learn from traditional healers, observe the ritual and ceremonial bases of healing, and examine the uses of non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) in the process of transformation and spiritual growth. (See next section for more information.)
PSY 6002 Applied Research Practicum / Clinical Practice
Practica are in-person opportunities for students to work with people receiving psychedelics 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.
Elective Courses
PSY 6191 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.
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?
SRS 6906 Religion & Psychology (Comparative Mythology & Archetypal Psychology)
Provides an examination of current psychological theories, such as critical psychology, depth psychology, archetypes, and ego psychology, as they relate to topics in religious studies.
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.
PSY 6190 Counselling With Dying and Bereaved
Teaches students about the phases of dying and bereavement. Provides practical skills in counseling the patient and the family.
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 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.
MRP 6999 Major Research Paper
Students will familiarize themselves with their thesis research area, utilize their research skills at multiple levels, and demonstrate their knowledge of major works in their area as related to a psychedelic topic.
Experiential Learning Opportunities
Fieldwork
Modern psychedelic research is confirming age-old Indigenous knowledge about the centrality of spirituality in the healing process: human flourishing rests upon bio-psychosocial and transpersonal/spiritual dimensions.
Our program is committed to promoting research on the role of spirituality in healing, and to advancing Indigenous ways of knowing by introducing students to traditional holistic systems of healing, and inculcating in them a knowledge of, and respect for, traditional plant medicines. The most direct and effective way to achieve this goal is by offering students short term (8-10 days) fieldwork opportunities among traditional healers and/ or entheogenic religious communities where the spiritual and communal dimensions of healing are centre stage.
Students will have the opportunity to learn from traditional healers (shamans, curanderos, madrihnas, etc.), observe the ritual and ceremonial bases of healing, and examine the uses of non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) in the process of healing and spiritual growth. We have established fieldwork opportunities among indigenous and traditional healers in Canada and internationally and are adding more.
