Cedar Psychiatry joins Novamind

I’m excited to share that at Cedar Psychiatry, we have entered into a formal partnership with Novamind, a Canadian company committed to the development and growth of psychedelic medicine. They're our new parent company, and the partnership went into effect this week. We are so thrilled about this new chapter, and confident about the value each organization adds to the crusade we're on together to provide innovative, high quality mental health care to our communities. Why Novamind?

Novamind is a Toronto-based psychedelic venture firm whose mission is to facilitate safe & legal access to psychedelics, advance psychedelic research, and catalyze personal wellness. They’re a significant investor in Synthesis, one of the top legal psilocybin retreat centers in the world (with some of the top psychedelic scientists as advisors, such as Robin Carhart-Harris and Rosalind Watts from Imperial College). Novamind is empowering the people, technology, and science behind psychedelic clinics & retreats, at the forefront of behavioral healthcare innovation. 

We’re experiencing a global mental health crisis, with 1 of 5 people directly affected, and the burden of suffering only seems to be increasing. Depression, more common than either cancer or heart disease, is the leading cause of ill health & disability worldwide, yet 50% of people with depression don't get treatment (and when they do, traditional treatments don’t always work). New & improved treatment approaches are urgently needed, and some of them are right in front of our noses.

Novamind & Cedar share the same values of compassionate care, innovative treatments, and stewardship (i.e. the return of psychedelic medicine in a safe and effective way). We’ve been growing fast and we’re fortunate enough to have reached a point where a partner like Novamind is necessary to take what we do to the next level in terms of access and innovation. We’ll still function as an independent organization and our leadership team will remain intact. What we can look forward to is access to added resources to learn and grow and serve together in the best possible way. In fact, we are excited to be launching even more services around screening, preparation & integration for individuals not only going through ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, but also those seeking psychedelic medicines therapeutically. We're aiming for a completely new standard of mental health treatment by building the infrastructure required to bring psychedelics into everyday healthcare.

Research is also at the heart of our mission to provide the best possible mental health care, and this new partnership gives us the opportunity to work on developing and disseminating new ways of helping individuals and families struggling with mental health conditions, especially those for whom traditional treatments have been ineffective. Especially in hard times like these, we’re committed to finding the best ways to help.

I’m so grateful for everyone who’s trusted us to be a part of their journey. This is a purpose-driven crusade we're on—to establish the use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in psychiatry. My hope is that we can access these tools for healing, in a prudent way, to alleviate suffering and help people not only heal and grow, but also to become the best possible version of themselves.

Cheers,

Reid Robision, MD MBA
Co-Founder, Cedar Psychiatry

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.