Scope &
Responsibility

Where does a psychedelic practitioner’s role begin — and where does it end? Scope is more than a list of tasks: it defines what a practitioner is expected, permitted, and professionally equipped to take responsibility for. A role centred on observation and safety carries different obligations from one that includes psychotherapy, trauma processing, clinical interpretation, or ongoing integration. Yet psychedelic practice often brings these functions unusually close together, while the labels used for practitioners may obscure rather than clarify the boundaries between them. This becomes especially important when work moves between research protocols, regulated healthcare, commercial services, and less formal settings.

Professional responsibility may depend on more than the title chosen for a role. Existing regulatory debate shows that responsibility for the drug, the psychotherapeutic process, and the surrounding care may fall under different professional or institutional frameworks. The same uncertainty affects practical questions such as who should manage psychological deterioration, when specialist expertise is required, what lies outside a practitioner’s competence, and when responsibility must be transferred or shared. These are not merely semantic distinctions: they influence safety, accountability, workforce design, and the scalability of psychedelic treatment. The ROLES Study therefore asks: what is each practitioner responsible for, and where are the boundaries of that responsibility? We map stated scope, professional accountability, limits of practice, supervision and escalation arrangements, and how these relate to practitioners’ qualifications, training, and expected clinical behavior.