Without system level reforms to strengthen proactive planning and provide clear implementation authority for truly transformative approaches, the VA risks repeating a familiar pattern: promising treatments are approved, but Veterans wait years before they are meaningfully accessible.

"Hopefully, today’s hearing is the first step in the right direction of a major paradigm shift. There is an urgent need to develop novel therapeutics – including MDMA, psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine, and 5-MeO-DMT (amongst others) – which may offer rapid and robust improvement of symptoms, particularly for those who have not benefitted from existing options."

Reason for Hope and VMHLC offered comments to the U.S. House Veterans' Affairs Committee encouraging the VA to establish its own psychedelic-assisted therapy Advisory Committee to prevent Veteran suicide and proposing that the VA implement its own expanded access pilot program, facilitating access to MDMA- and psilocybin-assisted therapy for a small subset of Veterans who are at serious risk of suicide and have exhausted all other options. Read the testimony