Role
Labels

Who is sitting with the patient — a therapist, facilitator, guide, monitor, sitter, or coach? In psychedelic care, these labels are often used as if they describe a clearly defined professional role. They do not. The same title can refer to very different kinds of work, while similar clinical activities may be performed under completely different labels. A monitor may mainly be responsible for safety and reassurance, whereas a facilitator may also build therapeutic rapport, respond to emotional distress, or support integration. Conversely, calling someone a therapist does not necessarily mean that a defined psychotherapy is being delivered.

This matters because a role label can easily be mistaken for information about professional qualification, clinical behavior, or responsibility. Yet these are separate questions. Even the distinction between psychological support and psychotherapy remains contested, making it difficult to infer the actual intervention from terminology alone. The ROLES Study therefore starts with a deceptively simple question: what are these practitioners actually called? We map the labels used across psychedelic treatment and research, and examine whether those labels correspond to differences in professional background, training, clinical behavior, and responsibility.