New Zealand Just Approved Its First Two Psychiatrists to Prescribe MDMA for PTSD
New Zealand's medicines regulator, Medsafe, has approved two named psychiatrists — Dr. Gary Wynn in Wellington and Dr. Tom Paterson in Auckland — to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade MDMA as part of supervised psychotherapy for adults with PTSD that hasn't responded to conventional treatment. Each spent more than a year in the approval process. It's a narrow authorization, not a general legalization — access runs through exactly two clinicians for now — but it puts New Zealand in the same authorized-prescriber lane Australia opened for MDMA-assisted therapy back in 2023, while the U.S. still has no approved MDMA therapy on the market: Resilient Pharmaceuticals' resubmitted application (branded Rysanso) remains under FDA review with no decision yet.
Read at Psychedelic Alpha