Andy Gibson - What can mental health services learn from festival welfare?

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What can mental health services learn from festival welfare?

The psychedelic renaissance has enormous potential to revolutionise the treatment of a range of mental health issues but the focus has been almost exclusively on affective and addiction related problems. Less attention has been given to the management of crisis situations, particular those that are related to psychosis, which are some of the most significant factors that lead to admission to psychiatric inpatient units.

However, these inpatient units rarely feel like therapeutic environments and rely heavily on the use of psychotropic medications to manage the issues. In this talk I will explore how integrating approaches to managing crises in festival settings, caused by drugs or otherwise, and the experience charities like PsyCare UK have gained from supporting people in these situations, could be transformative for mental health care provision across a range of care settings.

BIOGRAPHY
Andy studied Biological Sciences at Imperial College London from 2006 to 2009. He then started on the UCL/Birkbeck College MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience course and joined the UCL ClinicalPsychopharmacology group looking at the impact of combing D-cylcoserine with cue response and prevention therapy in heavy smokers. He trained in medicine at Warwick medical school from 2011 to 2015. After completing his foundation medical training, he gained further experience in hospital medicine, with a particular focus on managing the medical complications of addiction issues. He started training in psychiatry in Thames Valley in 2022.

Since 2017 he has volunteered at PsyCare UK, a charity specialising in drug harm reduction and mental health/psychedelic crisis intervention at UK and European music festivals. He has been part of the core management team since 2018 was appointed a trustee in early 2022. His primary research interests are in the management of addiction issues, psychedelic medicine, the endocannabinoid system and its therapeutic modulation and the role of neuroinflammation and psychoneuroimmunological mechanisms in psychiatric illness.