Developing the OPEN Core Consensus Measures for Assessment of Supervised Psilocybin Services: An e-Delphi Study

Korthuis et al. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 2024

Study Design: Surveys and qualitative interviews with 36 expert psilocybin facilitators (average 15.2 years of facilitation experience) to understand their recommendations for the most important things to measure that reflect the safety and impact of psilocybin services.

Key Findings:

• Core Measures: Expert facilitators prioritized 11 measures for how care is delivered (e.g. the number of preparatory hours with client, total dose of psilocybin administered, documentation of touch/sexual boundaries), 11 measures that best reflect outcomes (e.g. adverse events, well-being, anxiety/depression symptoms, and respect for boundaries), and 17 measures the reflect high quality settings for psychedelic sessions (e.g. back-up facilitator and referral for medical issues is available).

• Safety Checklist: Expert facilitators recommended a brief checklist of safety items to ask facilitators within 1 day of a session and to ask clients 1 week following a session. ​

The Takeaway: Service providers and policy makers should consider standardizing core measures developed in this study to monitor the safety, quality, and outcomes of community-based psilocybin services.