Psilocybin mushroom chocolate in group therapy for PTSD: the New Mexico protocol

A research team affiliated with the University of New Mexico (UNM) has, in Frontiers in Public Health published the protocol for a remarkable accessibility-focused study: a group-based psilocybin-assisted therapy (GPAT) for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), specially designed in collaboration with the community that will be using it.
As with the psiAN study discussed earlier, this article does not yet present any results, but it does set out a fully developed and now FDA-approved research protocol.

Why group therapy, and why community engagement?

Most clinical psilocybin trials to date have used a One-to-one model: one participant, one or two supervising therapists, throughout the entire session.
That model is intensive and therefore expensive, which severely limits access to this treatment in practice, particularly for groups that often have fewer financial resources, such as veterans, first-aid workers and survivors of sexual violence.
By working in groups, with peer facilitators By drawing on the experiences of the target group themselves, the researchers hope to develop a more cost-effective model without compromising on safety.
What makes this protocol unique is that it has been designed using a community-led process: the target group itself was involved in devising the design, which the research team describes as the first time a psilocybin therapy trial has been developed in this way.

Study design

This is a pragmatic, open-label, hybrid feasibility-implementation study, Phase I, with FDA approval for the use of whole psilocybin mushrooms incorporated into chocolate, rather than the synthetic psilocybin used in many other trials.
There are six groups of six participants comprising, amongst others, veterans, first-aiders and female survivors of sexual violence.
Each group undergoes two chocolate-tasting sessions, which 20 mg and 30 mg of psilocybin includes, supplemented by both group and individual therapy sessions.

What is being measured?

The primary outcome measures are safety and feasibility of this group format, supplemented by standardised PTSD assessments: the clinically administered CAPS-5 (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5) and the self-report questionnaire PCL-5 (PTSD Checklist for DSM-5).
As this is a Phase I trial, the focus is very much on the question or and how whether this model is safe and practicable, rather than on definitively proving its effectiveness.

Status of the study

By April 2026, the study had already received philanthropic and government funding, FDA authorisation (IND) had been granted, the research protocol had been approved by UNM’s Human Research Protections Office, and registration on ClinicalTrials.gov had been completed.
The recruitment of participants for screening was scheduled to begin in May 2026.

Addition

This protocol is worth following for a number of reasons, quite apart from the subsequent results.
Firstly, the use of whole mushrooms in the shape of chocolate, rather than the purified, synthetic psilocybin used by many pharmaceutical companies – a deliberate choice that is more in line with how psilocybin is often already used informally in practice, and which may also be cheaper and easier to scale up.
Secondly, it is group format with peer facilitators a direct response to a real problem within the psychedelics sector: the current one-to-one therapy models are simply too expensive and too labour-intensive to ever become widely available, particularly within public healthcare systems.
Similar group models have also been explored previously, for example in an Oregonstudy into group therapy with psilocybin for depression among people on low incomes, in which 19 out of 20 participants completed the treatment without any serious side effects and with an average satisfaction score of 4.8 out of 5.
For the specific target groups in this New Mexico study – veterans, first-aid workers and survivors of sexual violence – a group setting can also offer therapeutic benefits in its own right: sharing an intense experience with peers who have been through similar traumas can reduce feelings of isolation in a way that individual therapy does not always offer.

Source: "Community engagement as a foundation for implementation research for group psilocybin-assisted therapy in New Mexico." Front Public Health. 17 June 2026. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1845943. Clinical trial: NCT07506395.