Making Psychedelic Therapy Accessible with Myriam Barthes

welcome to Mental Health Evolution, a podcast about what's changing in mental health and why it matters. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, inviting you into honest conversations with people from all perspectives in the field. Clinicians, tech founders, investors, insurance companies, and all the folks in between. Let's explore what's working, what's not, and what's next. Hey, everyone, it's Rachel. I just finished recording a conversation with Myriam Barthes, co founder and CEO of Journey Clinical, and I have to say, I am still thinking about it. We really dug into some of the nuts and bolts of ketamine assisted psychotherapy, how to work with it, how, what some of the barriers are the recent FDA approvals. She actually talks about when to expect those to happen and what that rollout might look like. Um, she has some great ideas for anyone interested in this type of treatment, either for themselves or providing it as a clinician or as a business. We kept this conversation to the business level pieces of this treatment. It's well documented and we have previous episodes talking about ketamine assisted psychotherapy in specific, in kind of the therapy side. But listen in, I think you'll get a lot out of it. And Miriam is a lovely guest. Thanks for being here. Welcome back, everyone, to the Mental Health Evolution podcast. I'm Rachel Harrison and today I'm speaking with Myriam Barthes, co founder and CEO of Journey Clinical, the number one psychedelic assisted psychotherapy platform in the United States and home to the largest network of KAP trained therapists in the country. Miriam came to this work through her own personal experience with ketamine assisted psychotherapy. Before co founding Journey Clinical, she worked as an AI strategist and consultant. And she has brought that systems thinking lens to one of the most complex problems in mental health. How do you take a treatment that is clinically promising, legally available, and genuinely hard to access and make it actually reachable for patients and the therapists who want to offer it? Journey Clinical's answer is a collaborative care model, a platform that connects licensed psychotherapists with a dedicated medical team so that therapists can offer ketamine assisted psychotherapy to their clients without having to navigate the medical side alone. There are currently operating. Oh, they are currently operating across 27 states and they are building infrastructure for what comes next as psilocybin and other psychedelic treatments move toward FDA approval. We have a lot to cover today, and as promised, at the very end of the episode, I will share a few articles for Anyone who wants to go deeper. Miriam, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Rachel, for having me on the show. I'm excited for this conversation.

Me too. So in former episodes of this podcast, we have talked about what ketamine assisted therapy is, utilizing psychedelics in treatment, and that it is fairly established in the research. We can certainly talk about pertinent pieces to that, but I really want to drive in, dive into the process side of things, such as business systems that you've created. I'd love to hear sort of, what is the founder story? What was the idea behind Journey Clinical, and how did your former training and background assist you in creating this model?

This is a great question. So a couple of things. One, you know, 15 years of working with large institutions, learning about AI processes and systems in general meant to me that I had certain skills and I wanted to be able to utilize those skills skills in the real world to contribute and create something that I love and that has meaning. And after having personal experiences with psychedelic therapy, it was so clear that this is the direction that I wanted to go and move forward with. And so it was actually a perfect marriage of both the skill set and the passion, the enthusiasm, the meaning, so that I could put all these great skills that I had spent years cultivating into a mission that I could wake up every day and feel really proud and excited about my day, even if I end up looking at an Excel spreadsheet all day, because I know why I'm doing it. And I know we have, for example, on the platform Adreni Clinical Client wins. And so you see the stories and you talk to therapists and you hear the stories. And that's why we do what we do.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And that's awesome that you were able to find that inspiration for your skills. It is a win win. So ketamine is already legal and can be prescribed off label today. And that means that a therapist listening right now could theoretically start offering ketamine assisted psychotherapy without waiting for any new approvals. But what is actually stopping most therapists from doing that? And then how does Journey Clinical sort of step in and remove those barriers?

Yeah, this is a great question. And this is actually how we started the company. So we started the company during COVID in our living room. And what we did for, for maybe six months was talk to therapists and do surveys and user focus groups. Because my question was, why aren't you doing this today? And what we learned, the first thing, as you mentioned, was, well, prescribing is outside of our Scope of practice.

Right.

So we partner with a medical professional so that we can do the collaborative care that you mentioned. And then what happened is during these six months is, you know, I was customer success, customer support, talking through the clinician. What I understood was the medical team was one part of it. Then people also needed training and education.

Yeah, yeah.

That big part of what the therapist needed to feel safe, feel comfortable. And that takes many shapes. It start with, of course, therapy, didactic training, but also experiential training, shadowing sessions, co facilitating sessions, and then ongoing peer consultation groups so that they can speak among themselves about the cases that come up and how to address them. So education was the second bucket. And then, you know, it was Covid. So community, if people were at home in there, sometimes alone, sometimes people had group practices. But for the most part, community was also something that we, that the therapists were asking for. So we built a thriving, thriving, thriving community of therapists. And that's been really, really beautiful to witness different parts of the country, both in person, with events as well as digitally. And then the last two pieces were of course, resources like legal resources and marketing resources. So we build all of that. And then of course, insurance. Insurance is what we spent building in the last couple of years because we want these treatments to be accessible to people and we want to help therapists not have to do too much on the administrative side of insurance. So we basically built this company truly listening to the therapy and what they needed to integrate these treatments in their own practice with ease and comfort.

So this is interesting to me, this insurance piece in particular, because can you bill for ketamine assisted psychotherapy?

Great question. What we learned is that, for example, the medical consultations, intakes and follow ups are traditional medical visits. And that also preparation and integration, which is the framework that we follow. Preparation, dosing and integration are effectively psychotherapy, correct?

That makes sense to me. Yes.

So that means a large part of the treatment is actually covered through medical consultations and psychotherapy consultations.

Okay, so it's just the dosing piece that's not covered at this point.

This, the dosing piece, which can last an hour and a half. That's typically what we hear.

Okay, so you're helping different clinicians be able to sort of navigate some of those legal pieces. What can be billed, what can't be billed, how to communicate, how to get trained in it. You sort of seem to have kind of an all around package. So do your clinicians work for you specifically then, or is it just something that they add on as like a. An EHR system. Not that it is ehr, but does that add on in that way to their work?

Yeah, you can think about it as integrating a new modality into their practice. Just like emdr, just like ifs. It is a little bit more complex because there is this element that is medical and so you need a partnership with a medical professional. But otherwise, what we really tried to do is make it so easy for clinicians to do this without having to think about every step of the way.

Yeah.

And clinicians are effectively in private practice. And so this is an add on. We have a membership through Journey Clinical that they can participate in and then have access to our platform and our services and our medical team and all of the things are mentioned through that membership program.

Okay, awesome. That's a pretty interesting business model. I am also fascinated by this news. In April 2026, President Trump signed an executive order to fast track psychedelic treatments and the FDA issued national priority vouchers for psilocybin compounds. For clinicians who are trying to understand what that actually means for their practice. What is the realistic timeline and what can people be doing now to prepare? It's a fast tracking sounds really awesome. I think it's really interesting that this administration did that. And I'm just curious some of your thoughts on that whole process.

Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, psychedelics received all of a sudden national attention. So until now it was a little bit free cringe, it was a little bit. There was more stigma. People were like, is this a thing? Is this not not a thing? And I think after this, there have been so many pieces of news that have followed that. As you said, the FDA voucher collaboration between the VA and HHS as well, there was a summit in Washington D.C. around psychedelics and there was an FDA hearing actually coming up on 9-4-14 by the FDA to talk to people in the fields, clinicians, practitioners, scientists, investors to understand more. So I think it puts psychedelics on the map in a very clear way. Now with regards to the FDA voucher and the upcoming timelines, what we know today is that there are compass pathways which has the comp 360 which is a psilocybin derivative. The timeline that we know of is likely a if they receive FDA approval, it's likely going to be in Q4 this year.

Oh, wow, that's not too long. No, that is really fast tracked.

So what is it that is very

fast tracked considering this happened in April?

Absolutely. And I think what's interesting with that is it's really the FDA review timeline that has been compressed. So once the submission to the FDA has been submitted, Instead of a 9 to 12 months review cycle, it is now compressed to this 1 to 2 months review cycle.

Wow. Okay. So that could really open things up, it seems to me. What do you kind of envision as this, if this FDA approval comes through, what do you see changing or evolving in how this work is done?

I believe it's going to be the first of many FDA approvals. So that's the first thing. We know that Resilient also filed for FDA approval from DMA again. And we know that there are over a hundred clinical trials for psychedelic drugs at this point. So we expect that to be only the beginning of a field that is then going to mature and then inevitably the care delivery questions will be front and center. How do people actually access these treatments? And what we've been sharing with the therapist is from what we know today, the REMS from Provato. And the REMS is the risk and mitigation strategies that comes alongside the, the drug approval are likely going to be the baseline for comp360 FDA approval and all of the other drugs that are in the FDA pipeline.

Okay.

And so we tell therapists, if you want to get ready, let's get you started with Provato because you will be first in line. If you have a Provado run site that is certified, you will be first to offer psilocybin, MDMA and all of the other psychedelics that come through.

And do you offer training for all of these as well through Journey Clinical?

Yeah, of course. So what we plan to do, because we don't know the RAMS yet, but we have a research collaboration with Compass Pathways that we've had for two years. So we have been meeting with their team on a bi weekly basis for now, a couple of years. And so we are very, we're willing, ready and able to deliver these treatments, including the training portion of it. It's not yet live on our platform. That is part of what we're working through.

Okay. Wow, that's really exciting. Yeah. So I'm curious, given the fact that it feels like we are on the cusp of this sort of opening wide for FDA approval, do you see insurance companies getting on board with approving this treatment when once that happens, I think

it will be necessary. And again, we have the example of Spravato. So as I mentioned before, the medical consultations, we can use regular code for preparation integration. We can use regular code. It's really the dosing session. And so Spravato has specific codes for the dosing sessions. And so while they are category three codes that have been submitted to the ama, I believe for psychedelic treatments, these may take a little bit of time to get approved. And so we will need to be working with the codes that we have in the meantime to make sure that the treatment is covered. There are also some interesting affordability options, again, that we've seen with Provado that likely will be mirrored after, such as Provato and me, or there is a rebate that you can use. So I think the manufacturers want, you know, to make this treatment available and accessible to people who need it. And so everybody is very concerned and looking for solutions for affordability.

I love that. That's really inspiring. Well, we are about out of time today, but I would love to know what is one thing that you feel like our listeners could take away from the conversation today, Whether they're a business owner, a clinician, or a client in mental healthcare. What do you think it's important for people to know?

I think what's important today is to understand that we are only at the beginning of psychedelic treatments. I believe that these treatments will be mainstream and that they will be accessible to people who need it as a treatment option when needed. And so educate, you know, if you can educate yourself, understand it. I always feel very passionate about people understanding what this is because we know there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet and so people are better off when they're educated.

I love it. I think that is a solid plan for all people involved or interested. So thank you so much, Miriam, for being here today. Co founder and CEO of Journey Clinical. We will put her information in the show. Note for you if you want to follow up and learn more, of course, about training or about Journey Clinical. So this has been a great conversation. Miriam, I really appreciate you being here and thanks for kind of diving into the business side, the nuts and bolts side of all of this and your why. And yeah, it's been a great conversation.

Thank you. And thank you for your time too. And I think the work that you do is amazing.

Thank you. As promised, everyone, I want to offer you the articles that really kind of support the conversation that you just listened to today. The first One is from CNN, published in April 2026, covering the FDA's decision to fast track psilocybin and methylone for mental health treatment, including the executive order that set in motion and what national priority vouchers actually mean. For the timeline to approval. The second piece is written by Miriam herself. Our guest today, published on the Journey clinical website in May 2026, called what Psychedelics Reveal about the Human Capacity for Healing. I want to flag that this comes from the guest's own organization, but I found it genuinely worth reading. It's about what patients consistently report from psychedelic experiences and what that might tell us about how healing actually works. And the third article is from the Federal Register, published in July 2026, the FDA's own public hearing request on the future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. If you want to understand where the federal policy is actually heading, this is the primary source. And fourth is from cnbc, published this past July, looking at the psychedelic mental health market, Eli Lilly's acquisition Compass Pathways Phase 3 results and where the investment is going. For practice owners thinking about the next five years and what they look like, this one is worth a read. Thanks for listening and we will see you next time.