How to become a psychedelic therapist in Canada: what training exists and what it legally allows

Search for how to become a psychedelic therapist and almost every result is a page selling a course. This overview is different: it sells no training and names no prices. It sets out what Canadian law and regulators say about who can take part in psilocybin-assisted therapy, what kinds of training exist, and, most importantly, what a training certificate does not allow.

The starting point is Health Canada’s position. The production, sale and possession of magic mushrooms are illegal in Canada, and there are no approved therapeutic products containing psilocybin in Canada or elsewhere (Health Canada). Every legal route to psilocybin therapy runs through a regulated health care practitioner or an authorized clinical trial. For the routes themselves, see psilocybin-assisted therapy in Canada.

Is there a licence called “psychedelic therapist” in Canada?

No. We found no Canadian law, regulator or college that issues a licence or protected title called “psychedelic therapist” or “psilocybin therapist”. Courses use phrases like “psychedelic-assisted therapy” or “psychedelic psychotherapy” to describe what they teach, but completing one does not create a new profession.

What exists instead is two separate layers. The first is a regulated health profession, licensed by a provincial or territorial college. The second is federal drug law, which decides whether anyone may possess or give psilocybin at all. A third layer applies in Alberta only, where the province regulates psychedelic drug treatment services directly. Training sits beside these layers. It can build skills, but it does not replace any of them.

Step one is a regulated profession, not a psychedelic course

In the trials, programs and provincial rules we read, the people giving psilocybin-assisted therapy are already members of a regulated profession: physicians and psychiatrists, psychologists, registered psychotherapists, nurses, occupational therapists or social workers. Their college sets the standards they must meet, and its rules follow them into any new kind of practice.

Ontario: psychotherapy is a controlled act

In Ontario, treating a serious disorder of thought, cognition, mood, emotional regulation, perception or memory “by means of psychotherapy technique, delivered through a therapeutic relationship” is a controlled act. The College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) says unregulated providers performing it need either to restrict their practice or to register with CRPO or one of the five other colleges whose registrants can practise psychotherapy (CRPO).

So in Ontario, a person offering psychotherapy to people with serious mental health conditions, with or without any psychedelic involved, needs to belong to one of those colleges. We found no CRPO standard or guidance that addresses psychedelics specifically: its controlled-act page does not mention them, and searching its site for “psychedelic” and “psilocybin” returned nothing we could read. That is an absence we found, not a confirmed policy. For what exists locally, see psilocybin therapy in Ontario.

Only prescribers can ask Health Canada for psilocybin

Profession matters for a second reason. Through Health Canada’s Special Access Program (SAP), only regulated health care practitioners who are authorized to treat patients with prescription drugs may file requests on behalf of their patients (Health Canada). A 2023 Health Canada notice adds that the practitioner must be licensed to prescribe in the province or territory where they practise, and must also comply with the requirements of their own regulatory body (Health Canada, 2023). A psychotherapist, psychologist or social worker who cannot prescribe can take part in therapy, but cannot make the request.

What federal law allows a trained professional to do

Restricted drugs, the category that includes psilocybin, were the only category of controlled substances that could not be requested through the SAP after 2013 regulatory amendments. Regulations registered in December 2021 and published in January 2022 restored that possibility (Canada Gazette, SOR/2021-271). Health Canada describes the change as restoring the ability of practitioners to request restricted drugs such as psilocybin in January 2022 (Health Canada).

That change is narrow. The SAP is for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions when conventional treatments have failed, are unsuitable or are unavailable. It is not intended to encourage early use of drugs, to conduct research, or to bypass clinical trials and drug review (Health Canada, 2023). Under the 2023 notice, a class exemption did not let patients possess or transport the drug: it had to be used in the presence of the practitioner or a health professional to whom the practitioner delegated that task. Since 1 October 2026, new Controlled Substances Regulations are in force, with psilocybin listed among Restricted Drugs in Schedule 4 (Canada Gazette, SOR/2025-242). The step-by-step process is in our Special Access Program explainer.

On training specifically, Health Canada was direct in its 2021 notice: “Health care professionals wishing to access psychedelic drugs for professional training purposes are not eligible for the SAP.” The same notice said the amendments did not signal any intent towards decriminalization or legalization (Health Canada, 2021).

Experiential training and section 56 exemptions: what happened

Some training programs include “experiential training”, in which practitioners take psilocybin themselves. That is only legal with an exemption under section 56(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. According to CBC News, in 2020 the then Health Minister granted exemptions to 19 health care practitioners for this purpose, and this was reversed in 2022 when requests from 96 practitioners were refused (CBC News, 2025). A law-firm summary says the 2020 exemption was for a training program run by a not-for-profit patient advocacy group, and that the 2022 reason for refusal was that the practitioners could get access through a clinical trial (Torys, 2025).

In June 2025 the Federal Court of Appeal ruled the 2022 refusal unreasonable because the Minister did not explain the change from the earlier position, and sent the requests back for a new decision. It did not order exemptions granted, and it rejected most of the other grounds raised (Torys, 2025; CBC News, 2025). CBC reported that Health Canada was quoted in the decision as saying it was not aware of peer-reviewed clinical evidence that professionals need to take a psychedelic drug to appreciate what the patient experiences (CBC News, 2025).

We could not open the judgment itself (the court and CanLII pages refused access), so this account rests on those two summaries. We found no public report of the Minister’s new decision as of 20 October 2026. Our section 56 explainer covers the wider exemption history.

Alberta: the only province with written rules on who may provide it

Alberta amended its Mental Health Services Protection Regulation in October 2022, with the new requirements in effect from 16 January 2023 (Government of Alberta fact sheet). Providers of psychedelic drug treatment services for psychiatric disorders need a provincial licence unless they work within an approved clinical research trial (Alberta Regulation 114/2021). The province says the framework ensures clinical oversight by a psychiatrist and sets out qualifications for people conducting psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (Government of Alberta). The rules, according to the regulation’s text:

• Prescribing: no one may prescribe a designated psychedelic drug, including psilocybin, to treat a psychiatric disorder unless they are a psychiatrist trained as the provincial Standards require. A physician who is not a psychiatrist may prescribe only after, and with ongoing, consultation with a psychiatrist (section 36) (Alberta Regulation 114/2021).
• Medical director: a licensed provider must appoint a medical director, who must be a psychiatrist (section 40) (Alberta Regulation 114/2021).
• Who may provide the psychotherapy: a regulated member of one of six colleges (occupational therapists, physicians and surgeons, psychologists, registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, or social workers) who is authorized to perform psychosocial intervention (section 38) (Alberta Regulation 114/2021).
• Education or experience: anyone other than a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist also needs a clinically related master’s or doctoral degree, or, in the medical director’s assessment, at least 5 years’ experience treating PTSD, mood or related disorders with evidence-based psychotherapy (section 38) (Alberta Regulation 114/2021).
• Training: the psychotherapist must have the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy training and experience the medical director requires and the Standards set out (section 38). The Standards we read leave this to the medical director rather than naming a course or number of hours (Psychedelic Drug Treatment Services Standards).
• Facility: the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta says community psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy must be performed in a CPSA-accredited medical facility by a psychiatrist or a physician in consultation with a psychiatrist (CPSA, 2023).

Two points stand out. Alberta’s list of who may provide the psychotherapy does not include unregulated practitioners at all. And a provincial licence is not a federal authorization: the drug itself still has to come through a Health Canada route. Our Alberta article covers the licensing system in more detail.

What psychedelic therapy training exists in Canada

We describe only what official pages say. We do not rank, recommend or price any program, and there are private courses we have not reviewed.

University programs

Vancouver Island University announced a graduate certificate in psychedelic-assisted therapy in February 2022, describing it as the first of its kind from an accredited university in Canada, set to launch that September (VIU News, 2022). Its program page now says the university cancelled the certificate on 20 November 2025, with continuing students given reasonable access to classes until 31 August 2026. The page described the program as designed for a wide range of people, including traditional healers, therapists, spiritual care providers, physicians and nurses, with a supervised practicum (Vancouver Island University).

The University of Ottawa’s graduate catalogue lists a Microprogram in Psychedelic Science: 9 units of coursework, with a compulsory course in psychedelic psychotherapies and mental health plus courses in pharmacology and neuroscience. Non-degree applicants need a four-year bachelor’s degree in psychology or a related field (or equivalent) with a minimum B+ average (University of Ottawa). It is an academic credential; the catalogue page we read does not present it as a licence to practise.

Training inside clinical trials

Much of the formal training described in research is run by trial sponsors for their own studies. A 2021 paper on one sponsor’s program for a psilocybin depression trial describes four parts: online learning, in-person training, applied clinical training, and ongoing mentoring. By then 65 health care professionals had been trained as therapists and assisting therapists across the US, Canada and Europe. Its authors are linked to the sponsor (Tai et al., 2021). For what the therapist actually does in a session, see what happens in a psilocybin therapy session.

In Canada, the CAnadian Network for Psychedelic-Assisted Cancer Therapy (CAN-PACT), launched in 2025, lists among its objectives developing and providing training and education for clinicians, researchers and patients, alongside a planned multi-centre randomized trial in advanced cancer (Carlson et al., 2025).

No agreed standard yet

There is no shared Canadian standard for what this training must contain. A 2025 consensus statement from a US network of depression centres calls for standardized training for health care providers as part of its research agenda (Hosein et al., 2025). Alberta, the one Canadian jurisdiction with written rules, leaves the specifics to each clinic’s psychiatrist medical director (Alberta Regulation 114/2021).

What a training certificate does and does not do

• A certificate can add knowledge and supervised practice to an existing profession.
• It does not create a regulated profession or a protected title.
• It does not let a non-prescriber request psilocybin through the SAP.
• It does not override a college’s scope of practice or standards.
• In Alberta, it does not on its own meet the regulation: the profession, education or experience, and medical-director requirements still apply.

What is still unknown

• What the Minister decided after the Federal Court of Appeal sent the 2022 training-exemption refusals back. We found no public report.
• Whether Ontario’s CRPO, or colleges in other provinces, will publish guidance on psychedelic-assisted therapy. We found none at CRPO.
• Whether any province besides Alberta will regulate who may provide it.
• Whether experiential training is needed at all. Health Canada said it knew of no peer-reviewed evidence for it, and the court summaries say the court declined to settle that scientific question.
• What standard training will look like if a psilocybin product is ever approved in Canada. None is approved now.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about Canadian rules on psychedelic therapy training. It is not medical, legal, career or purchasing advice, it does not recommend any training provider, and it does not recommend any product.