PsyStandard - European verification standards for psychedelic practitioners

New framework will establish rigorous clinical and ethical baselines for non-clinical practitioner assessment

Drug Science and Pink Elephant have announced a partnership to develop PsyStandard, a European practitioner verification framework that will establish consistent standards for assessing safety and competence in psychedelic practice.

The collaboration addresses a significant gap in practitioner quality assurance. People accessing psychedelic support—whether through clinical therapy, retreat settings, or integration coaching—currently have no standardised way to assess whether a practitioner's work meets basic safety and competency criteria. While credentials indicate training history, they reveal little about a practitioner's safety orientation, clinical boundaries, or the actual quality of their practice. This partnership will ground assessment standards in current evidence rather than assumption.

What Drug Science is contributing

Drug Science is co-designing the clinical safety baseline for the framework's verification methodology. This includes defining the harm governance protocol that sits beneath the assessment criteria, and establishing the competency dimensions and behavioural anchors used to evaluate practitioners in observed practice settings.

All criteria will be published openly as part of the verification methodology document, ensuring transparency across the field.

A collaborative approach

The verification framework is being co-designed with academic institutions and practitioner training organisations. Drug Science's role ensures the framework is grounded in current research and ethically rigorous, whilst remaining calibrated for non-clinical scope.

Dr Anne Schlag, Head of Research at Drug Science, said: "Practitioner quality in psychedelic care cannot be reduced to credentials alone. The field needs verification standards that reflect what the evidence actually tells us about safe and effective practice. This co-design process is an opportunity to build those standards carefully and transparently."

Max de Rosnay, PsyStandard Lead, added: "The clinical and ethical foundations of a verification framework are not areas where good intentions are sufficient. Working with Drug Science on the harm governance protocol and assessment criteria means those foundations are built on research, not assumption."

The verification framework is expected to launch in Q3 2026.