88: Dr. William van Derveer: Psychedelic therapy and functional medicine: A new paradigm for healing

Are psychedelics the new wonder drugs for mental health? One could be excused for thinking so given the buzz in the field, the impressive research results, the rush of patients and practitioners lining up for a piece of the promise. But it's a young field. And like any goldrush, full of pitfalls, misleading claims and confusion.

In order to shed some clarity on this emerging field, psychiatrist Dr. William van Deveer and psychologist, Dr. Keith Kurlander, co-founders of The Integrative Psychiatry Institute (IPI), have just come out with their first book Psychedelic Therapy: Restore Your Mental Health, Reclaim Your Life, which aims to be a grounded guidebook for those wanting to learn more about the research and practice of working with psychedelics.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. van Deveer for the MindHealth360 Show, where we discuss his unique approach to integrating functional medicine and psychedelic therapy to address the deeper drivers of mental ill health, be they biochemical or psychospiritual. Drawing on his own journey out of conventional psychiatry, he describes how the limits of talk therapy and medication led him to explore the gut–brain connection, somatic trauma therapy and psychedelic-assisted treatment – and why an understanding of root causes across body, mind and spirit are essential to long-term healing.

Through the IPI, Dr. van Deveer and Dr. Kurlander have trained thousands of clinicians in integrative approaches to mental health and more than 2,500 in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Dr. van Deveer has also staffed MAPS-sponsored clinical trials in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. In this conversation, he shares how his work has evolved from conventional psychiatry into a broader model that integrates functional medicine, trauma-informed care and psychedelic therapy.

In this practical and wide-ranging discussion, Dr. van Deveer outlines his framework for assessing mental health through a broad map of root causes – including lifestyle, detoxification, infections, the microbiome, autoimmunity, psychology and spirituality. He explains why many patients need both functional medicine and psychedelic therapy, especially as early trauma, insecure attachment and physiological dysregulation are often intertwined. He also explores the distinct biochemical profiles of MDMA, ketamine and psilocybin, and shows why psychedelic treatment is most effective when it is used not as a standalone fix, but as a catalyst for deeper healing, behaviour change and self-care.

Dr. van Deever, alongside co-author Dr. Keith Kurlander, will release Psychedelic Therapy: A Revolutionary Approach to Restoring Your Mental Health and Reclaiming Your Life on May 31.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What led Dr. van Derveer to move beyond conventional psychiatry after discovering how limited medication and talk therapy could be for many patients.

• How a former patient's recovery from panic disorder and agoraphobia after being diagnosed with celiac disease transformed his understanding of the gut–brain connection and led him to explore the wider biological root causes of mental illness.

• Why he sees functional medicine and psychedelic therapy as two complementary healing traditions that often need to be used together.

• How his treatment model maps root causes across lifestyle, the body, detoxification, infections, the microbiome, autoimmunity, psychology and spirituality.

• Why early trauma may be stored outside narrative memory – in somatic, episodic and procedural memory – and continue to shape beliefs, relationships and health behaviours.

• How insecure attachment and early dysregulation can underlie self-beliefs and behaviour patterns that later contribute to addiction, inflammation and poor health.

• Why Dr. van Derveer believes inflammation is a common pathway linking trauma, gut dysfunction and other drivers of mental illness.

• How MDMA, ketamine and psilocybin differ in their biochemical effects, psychological impact and spiritual potential.

• Why he describes MDMA as pro-inflammatory in the short term, ketamine as potentially helpful in reducing the impact of quinolinate-related excitotoxicity, and psilocybin as having broader anti-inflammatory effects.

• Why psychedelic therapy works best as a catalyst for self-love, spirituality, and sustained lifestyle change within ongoing therapeutic work—not as a one-off, "pill for an ill" intervention detached from root causes.