Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Ayahuasca-Assisted Psychotherapy in Grief

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Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Ayahuasca-Assisted Psychotherapy in Grief

Débora González, PhD (Psychologist)
Karen Llewelyn (Advocate & Activist for Mental Health and Addiction, Study Participant)

Tuesday 1 April, 2025 7PM CEST (5PM GMT, 1PM ET, 10AM PT)

Online via Zoom

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Join psychologist and researcher Débora González as she presents key findings from a clinical study evaluating the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca within a meaning-reconstruction therapy framework. This study involved 82 participants and explores how ayahuasca can facilitate healing in the grieving process. Dr. González will share clinical insights and discuss how ayahuasca may help individuals process unresolved emotions, accept the irreversibility of death, and foster personal healing. She will also highlight the role of ceremony, community, and therapeutic integration in supporting this process.

The event will feature a facilitated conversation with study participant Karen Llewelyn, an advocate and activist for mental health and addiction, who will share her deeply personal experience of grief and healing after the loss of her child. The session will conclude with an audience Q&A, providing an opportunity for further exploration of this important topic.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERs

Dr. Débora González is a psychologist with a PhD in Pharmacology who seamlessly integrates her roles as a researcher, educator, and clinician. She currently advances research at the Sant Joan de Deu Foundation, imparts knowledge at Universidad Isabel I, and provides therapy at Clínica Synáptica (Barcelona). Her work includes several articles on the pharmacology of 2C-B, Salvia divinorum, and ayahuasca. In recent years, her research has focused on exploring ayahuasca’s therapeutic potential in helping individuals navigate the grieving process after the loss of a loved one.

Karen Llewelyn is a member of the Scottish Families Campaign for Change, Recovering Justice and the Scottish Psychedelic Research Group. She and her husband Chris have supported their two sons for the last ten years with mental health and substance use issues. Tragically her youngest son Jake lost his life due to over-sedation and restraint in a psychiatric unit which led to a cardiac arrest and subsequent brain injury in May 2023. Both young men have experienced drug-induced psychoses and the harm that state ‘care’ can cause when they have been in crisis, be it through police intervention, hospitalisation, or imprisonment. All assistance of note for this family has come from the third sector and peer support. After an opportunity to address her own grief and trauma, Karen attended a psychedelic retreat in Barcelona in November 2023 and has become convinced that this is the route that mental health care must take.

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