A new proposal from an Atlanta City Council member would direct municipal officials to explore the pros and cons of adding coverage for psilocybin and ketamine as mental health treatments to the city’s healthcare plan for firefighters, police and other government workers.
“Traditional treatments for mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and others have shown limited effectiveness for some individuals, leading to a need for exploring alternative therapeutic options,” the legislation, which is currently being sponsored by 11 of the Council’s 16 members, states. “Recent research has demonstrated the potential efficacy of alternative therapies such as ketamine-assisted therapy and psilocybin-assisted therapy in treating various mental health conditions, offering promising results where other treatments have failed.”
The resolution’s lead sponsor, Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari, has said city workers deserve access to a broad range of mental health services.
“We should be offering our employees—and especially our first responders, who are expected to be superhuman—the same amount of grace and providing them with a tool set to essentially overcome this issue,” The lawmaker recently told Axios.
Bakhtiari said the impetus for including the drugs on public employees’ health plans was meeting a West Virginia police officer who witnessed a fellow officer die of suicide and later used ketamine to treat his PTSD. The lawmaker said they’re not aware of any other city governments that have looked into covering psilocybin or ketamine treatment.
The resolution from Bakhtiari would request the Atlanta’s human resources department to “explore the feasibility of adding coverage for ketamine therapy, psilocybin therapy, and other alternative therapies for mental illness in the City’s employee benefits contract during its next round of negotiations.”
Hellbound and Down 