J.J. (Joost) Breeksema, MA

My current project proposes to investigate how treatment modalities involving 'psychedelic substances' - including psilocybin, mdma and ketamine - impact patients with different psychiatric disorders such as depression and PTSD. My primary aim is to describe patient experiences in detail, to understand patients' processes of meaning-making, and to explore their perceptions on how their experiences change their relation to their illness. The final aim is to better understand how experiences induced by these substances relate to psychological mechanisms and what we can learn that helps facilitate the psychotherapeutic process.