Spiritual health clinical practice, psychedelic medicine and science

By Martha Nolan May 23, 2025

Emory Spiritual Health and the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality (ECPS) recently hosted the third Science on Spiritual Health Symposium (SOS). Some 250 people attended the two-day conference to hear international leaders discuss the latest science and scholarship in established inpatient and outpatient general practice of evidence-based spiritual health interventions and the growing field of science of spiritual influences in psychedelic medicine clinical trials. Both caring and treatment pathways are poised to enhance the medical system's approach to treating mental illness, spiritual distress and physical ailments.

“Emory is the international leader in investigations and scholarly work at the intersection of spiritual health with mental health,” says George Grant, executive director for Spiritual Health in Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center and the leader of clinical spiritual health service across Emory Healthcare.

In 2022, Grant formed a partnership with Emory’s Department of Psychiatry to found and co-direct the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality. “For both initiatives, we draw upon the work of gifted persons across the university,” says Grant. “We collaborate widely with like-minded thinkers and scientists across the globe to innovate in the discipline of health care chaplaincy and its relationship to health science and to help develop novel treatments for intractable mental illness suffering in psychiatry. Our SOS meeting, running annually now for three years, is responsible for disseminating leading edge work to those who are dedicated to the promulgation of whole person health.”

Psychedelic-assisted therapy is being widely studied—at Emory and other specialized academic medical centers—to treat a variety of mental disorders. The results have been encouraging. Precise laboratory derived compounds such as MDMA has shown promise treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psilocybin (the psychoactive component in “magic mushrooms” developed for clinical trials in synthetic form) has shown effect for ameliorating treatment-resistant depression, addiction, and end of life anxiety, and a more common anesthetic called ketamine is showing promise for treating depression, chronic illness and suicidality. All of this work is accompanied by a highly regulated and IRB approved psychotherapeutic component.

Before these substances are approved for use in adopted clinical treatment, however, more study is needed, according to Boadie Dunlop, director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the other founder and co-director of ECPS. In this year's talks, Dunlop proposed three clinical trials—one to develop a method to determine when a patient is ready for dosing, another to determine if some psychedelics work best for patients with specific psychological, social or biological factors, and another to investigate whether gains from psychedelic-assisted therapy can best be maintained post-treatment by rapidly introducing antidepressants, a specific course of psychotherapy, or additional psychedelic sessions. “These are all things we will want to know and work with when these substances are ultimately FDA approved,” says Dunlop.

Other SOS talks provided by international experts touched on the need to investigate and categorize potential harms associated with psychedelic-assisted therapy (ECPS is taking a lead in the ethics and outcomes of adverse effects), the need for religious leaders to recognize and prepare for the acceptance and application of safe psychedelic-assisted therapies (PAT), and ways to make PAT more accessible and affordable.

Grant, as chair of the SOS, presented two Torch and Trumpet awards for scientific achievement—one to his partner Dunlop and one to Jennifer Mascaro, associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and lead scientist in Emory Spiritual Health. Mascaro provided a talk that showed evidence of the effectiveness of Emory Spiritual Health’s Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health bedside intervention (CCSH) on the well-being of patients served at Emory Healthcare.

View recordings from the 2025 Science on Spiritual Health Symposium.

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