Former Federal Coalition Minister, Andrew Robb has called on all NSW state parliamentarians to demand urgent amendments to the NSW health department regulations.
Changes are necessary to ensure the sensible availability of psychedelic treatments in NSW, following the 2023 TGA approvals, and the remarkable mental health results that have been achieved in over 125 clinical trials in the US, UK, Israel and Switzerland over the last 10 years.
Mr Robb said, “Despite Australia’s national medicines authority, the TGA, authorising approved psychiatrists to prescribe medical grade psilocybin for Australians suffering severely from treatment resistant depression and medical grade MDMA for Australians suffering from debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder as part of therapy, the NSW Health Department has imposed regulations which effectively block access. It beggars belief.”
Mr Robb backed the Mind Medicine Australia (MMA) campaign that is urging the NSW Government to adopt similar regulations to those put in place in Victoria and Queensland, allowing these medicines to be used in the clinics of approved psychiatrists in the same way that medicinal ketamine is used.
“NSW mental health sufferers face the ludicrous and hugely expensive situation of being forced to travel to Victoria or Queensland for the course of treatments,” said Mr Robb.
“The NSW requirement that treatments only occur at a mental health hospital, and that patients are required to stay overnight, rather than attend the day clinics of highly qualified psychiatrists, flies in the face of findings in more than 125 overseas clinical trials. The Department’s regulations make it prohibitively expensive for patients and ignores the huge difficulty in getting access to the limited number of mental health hospitals in NSW that are already strained to capacity. A forced overnight hospital stay has never been found to be necessary, and, if anything, such hospital stays can negatively impact the actual treatment.”
