Members Only Event – Ketamine Assisted Therapy – 9 December 2025 7:30pm

The Ketamine Assisted Therapy Special Interest Group will be a space where IPT members can come together to reflect, discuss and explore the research, practice, and lived experience of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.

Our guest for this meeting is Dr. Pedro Castro Rodrigues, a psychiatrist and Clinical Research Fellow in Psychopharmacology at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London.

Dr. Rodrigues previously coordinated a pioneering programme combining ketamine with psychotherapy in a large public hospital in Lisbon (Hospital Julio de Matos). He will be presenting and discussing a synthesis of current understanding around ketamine’s mechanisms of action on the brain and mind, sharing insights from establishing and developing a KAT service in a public hospital, and outlining the ketamine therapy pilot currently underway at CNWL in the NHS, as well as plans for ketamine group therapy pilot.

Although not considered a classic psychedelic, there is increasing research and anecdotal evidence of Ketamine’s therapeutic benefit, and of its potential as an agent of change and as a facilitator of psychic material to be unearthed and integrated. It holds an especially relevant position as the first model of medicine-assisted psychotherapy that is available in many healthcare settings. Therefore the work with this substance is likely to inform future frameworks for psychedelic-assisted therapies.

The group will be facilitated by Silvia Murguia and Frederico Magalhaes and is set to take on different voices, including professionals in the field, discussions of papers and books, testimonies from people with lived-experience, and multidisciplinary panels.