The Transformative Role of Psychedelics and Ketamine in Behavioral Health with Lana Seiler

Imagine navigating uncharted territories. That's exactly what our episode today is about; we're on an exciting exploration with Lana Seiler, the clinical manager at All Points North Lodge in Colorado. We're demystifying the potent force of psychedelics and ketamine in behavioral health care, dispelling myths and opening up discussions about this fascinating world. Lana graciously guides us through her professional journey into integrative psychiatry and neuro-technology, shedding light on her profound interest in the transformative role of these substances and the complexities we encounter along the way. 

We're not stopping there; we also want to educate our listeners about the realm of behavioral and mental health. Think of it as a virtual, welcoming space where we help you decode the often convoluted terminologies used by clinicians. We tackle the tricky topic of compliance issues, rules, and regulations and discuss the triumphs and tribulations of integrating these innovative treatment modalities. The adventure gets thrilling as we delve into the intricacies of tracking systems, patient success metrics, and the challenge of measuring long-term outcomes. So, join the conversation, and let's chart a course towards a new understanding of how these powerful medicines can be responsibly and effectively incorporated into our Western paradigm.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Hatching Creativity.
This isn't just anotherbehavioral health podcast.
This is the place where thoughtleaders converge to talk about
real-life challenges,breakthroughs and pivotal aha
moments.
Thanks for tuning into HatchingCreativity.
Today I speak with Lana Seiler,the clinical manager over at
All Points North in Colorado.

(00:21):
She also has a podcast calledTherapy Unboxed.
Today we talk about some newtreatment modalities like
ketamine and psychedelics inbehavioral health, as well as
some of the data they'recollecting and tracking around
the results.
She also shares some of hertips in getting clients to
participate more readily inoutcome surveys.
And don't forget if you likewhat you hear, please like,

(00:44):
share and tell all your friendsabout Hatching Creativity.
Today we're going to be talkingabout psychedelics and
behavioral health care.
What is your experience in thisarea?
First, Great.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, so I am the clinical manager of our trauma
program at All Points NorthLodge, so I've built our trauma
program and I'm sort of helpingit continue to run.
I'm in transition into our plusdepartment, which is
integrative psychiatry andneuro-technology.
So that's where we house deepGMS, hbot, neurofeedback, the
celoganglian block injection andketamine.

(01:18):
My interest is moving in thatdirection because of the sort of
precipice that we're at rightnow with psychedelics coming
into the fields and more of areal way I mean we're looking at
mid-2024, potentially forlegalization or at least more

(01:40):
use in a clinical setting we asclinicians and psychologists
need to sort of know what isgoing on.
We need to know what's beinglooked at, what's being studied,
how people are looking atimplementing, what rules,
regulations, restrictions,compliance issues there are.
There's just so much to look at.
Opening up the store.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
So when you say there's so much to look at, if
you have a treatment providerwho's watching this and looking
to get into treatment withpsychedelics or this type of
therapy, one little bit aboutthe successes that you've seen
and then what kind of datayou're tracking around the
success so you know that you aresuccessful and this may help

(02:24):
for people to understand thatthis is a very viable solution
for certain people.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
So we're only working with ketamine right now,
obviously.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
What type of work?
How are you administering it?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
So we started out in chenazole and now we're moving
to intramuscular.
As we know, there's somedifficulty with getting ketamine
right now.
There's a shortage.
There's some supply chainissues, so the preferred route
might not always be available,but those are the two that we're
using.
Most of our patients arepreferring intramuscular.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
What are you seeing in terms of results and how are
you tracking that?
I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah.
So we have some tweaking to do,I think, on how we're tracking
those specific things.
We use right now a couple ofstandardized tests, so like the
GAD for anxiety, the PCL5 forPTSD, page Q9 for depression, we
also, as an organization, weuse Acorn to track our outcomes

(03:27):
in general as a treatment.
What is that?
Acorn is a tracking programthat is used all over the
country and it has a pool of atthis point, it's big enough that
there's a pool of data that wecan.
Essentially, acorn looks at andmeasures your patient's success

(03:48):
based on this is just one partof it based on what the
predictive success is for apatient that comes in with that
level of distress and thoseparticular problems.
So we can get kind of a graphthat shows this is what Acorn
predicts their success to be.
This is what their successactually is, and it does use the
global distress scale.

(04:08):
But it also has many othermeasures.
We can look at social, we canlook at their work, we can how
the patient feels about thesethings, symptoms, the
relationship between the patientand the therapist.
So Therapeutic Alliance,therapeutic Alliance, and that's
in there.
So it tracks all those things.
So that's what we use ingeneral.
The difficulty is trying tofigure out what is helping,

(04:30):
because we have so many thingsthat we're doing at all points.
For example, they could begetting HBOT, they're definitely
getting therapy, they're inresidential level of care, so so
many services and then they'realso getting ketamine, so it's a
little difficult to see.
Is there depression going downspecifically because they're
doing ketamine treatment with us, or is it because they're in

(04:50):
this healing environment andthey're doing so much to all
this different work?
Right?

Speaker 1 (04:55):
We do a lot for outcomes on the outpatient right
Other down that continuum sothat you can really see.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Long term.
What's happening right, and forus it's.
You know, we are curious, right.
I'm curious about you know, howmuch is ketamine specifically
influencing versus HBOT, versusall those other things?
And these are things that Ithink we should be asking about
and we should be looking attracking, and that's going to
grow, you know, before you know,MDMA might be available and

(05:26):
psilocybin might be available,and so it's going to be
interesting to see how thesemedicines really are working.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, well, as we spoke earlier on a previous
video about integrated health,right, and if you can just get
somebody past the point wherethey're having tremendous
anxiety about certain things, ofcourse it's going to have a
great effect on them and theirability to, to the resilience of

(05:59):
their long term help.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
So and it's complicated.
I mean, we don't, you know,just in doing work with ketamine
, it affects people differently.
There's not, it's not.
I haven't seen a real standard.
I've seen people respond to itvery differently.
And these are powerfulmedicines that we're looking at
incorporating powerful medicinesthat have been used for
generations by indigenoushealers and people who have deep

(06:26):
relationships with thesemedicines, and so there's a lot
of question and conversationaround how do we ethically, how
do we safely, how do weeffectively incorporate these
very powerful medicines into ourWestern paradigm?
I'm currently in thepsychedelic assisted therapy
training with Naropa University,which is an eight month.

(06:48):
It's essentially a graduatecourse.
It's an eight month program andsome of it's in person and a
lot of it's online for thecoursework and the reading and
all that.
But we had our opening retreatand it was very.
It really brought up a lotbecause we had two indigenous
healers there.
One of them is on the faculty.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
So you got a chance to to really see the way that
this has been done for thousandsof years, as opposed to how
we're trying to figure out howto use it.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Now, and it really there's a risk of it being the
bright, shiny new thing, andthere's a risk of it being this
like magic pill that we all knowdoesn't really exist, Because
that is kind of how our culturedoes things right.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
I agree.
I think there needs to be moredone.
More done in data, but data asto tracking what you're doing.
You know we talk outhouse allthe time.
You know everybody and if youwalk around this conference hall
, everybody will have their ideaof outhouse.

(07:50):
My opinion that's a problem,right, because if there's not
standardized West Chips, now youhave your standardized
assessments, your GADs and yourHP9s and all this, but if you're
, if everybody's collecting itin different frequencies, you
know different timeframes, ormaybe a big problem is you don't

(08:12):
get the clients to participate.
Your motivation for gettingtheir outcomes in, for surveying
them on outcomes, should not beso we have a better
understanding of how we get.
This should be more about them.
Yeah, right, and I think that'sone thing that we all miss on.
Many people miss on.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
And it's about the client.
Yeah, and if you're not usingthe that outcome data to provide
good information to them abouttheir treatment, their recovery,
they're not going to continuetaking Right.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
The acorn is good for that because I can show them
the graph.
But we look at it together.
This is in a lot of times, youknow we're lucky and the
anticipated decrease in distresswill.
We're way below that and theycan see that and they get
excited about it, right?
Or we can look at where we'vespiked up and what was going on
during that time, right.

(09:11):
So that's why I like the visualcomponent of that graph, acorn.
I mean, if there is a problemwith keeping it going after they
leave, to see how people aredoing in the long term, right.
That is a challenge.
I think it's a challenge in ourindustry for everybody.
Um, it is.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, are you familiar with David Weigts sock
and their recovery capital index?
And not really, I woulddefinitely say.
If you're not, I can introduceyou.
He's somebody that we work withreally closely.
Yeah, he's looking at recoverycapital in three silos, you're
so sure you're personal, andyour cultural cap.

(09:47):
Yeah, how are they doing inthese three areas as indicators
of quality of life?
You know I talk to people allthe time.
I say you know people don't gointo treatment to stop using a
substance or to stop a behavior,right Going to treatment
because life has becomeunmanageable the way they're

(10:08):
living it.
So why solely looking atsymptoms?
We miss the quality of lifeportion.
It sounds like you get.
You got that in acorn.
One of the things I really likeabout what David does is it
provides instant feedback to theclient on where they are in

(10:29):
these areas and where their riskfactors may be.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
And it goes to them.
Obviously, it will be helpfulfor clinician to be able to
review this with them, but atthe same time, if you're in an
outpatient setting, you justwant them to get some good
information.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Absolutely, you know absolutely so I have a podcast
called Therapy Unboxed.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Oh, yes, I wanted to ask you.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, and the purpose of that podcast really is to
help educate consumers ofbehavioral health and mental
health services, because I thinkthere's an unnecessary shroud
of mystery.
I think behavioral health,mental health, psychology has
sort of been this, like you know, on the side elements of
healthcare and it just notenough people know about what we

(11:16):
do, why we do what we do, howthe process worked.
What does CVT mean?
What does DVT mean?
Yes, so my podcast, we go intothese things, things that terms
that we just throw around allthe time as clinicians and we
might even benefit from taking adeeper look at it.
I agree, and so I have, youknow, guests on who are experts.
I have somebody who's theadvocate for the listeners in

(11:38):
case we get a little tooclinical and they jump in and
they say what does that actuallymean on the show, and it gives
people an opportunity to reallyget a deeper understanding so
that they can be betterconsumers, more informed
consumers.
One of my episodes is actuallyon psychedelic assisted therapy
and I did it with my supervisorin Florida who has already done

(11:59):
the max training, and we didactually two parts because
there's so much to talk about.
So if anybody's Looking formore information on that, even
like to check out therapy on boxpsychedelic system therapy,
episodes one and two.
I saw it on Spotify, it's onZed, on Apple, yeah, it's kind
of everywhere you can getpodcasts.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Thanks for tuning in to hatching creativity.
We appreciate your support.
Please don't forget to like andsubscribe until all your
friends about the show andremember it's never just about
one thing.
You, you, you, you, you, you,you, you, you, you.