Norway Pays for Ketamine Therapy Nationally. A UK Trial Just Beat Standard NHS Talk Therapy 89% to 45%.
Psychedelic Alpha's Ryan Khan reported from Estonia's first international psychedelic-therapy conference, TAIP 2026 in Tallinn, with a five-country snapshot of where European policy actually stands — not announcements, implementation.
Norway is the furthest along: after a campaign led by Dr. Lowan Stewart, its health technology body backed national reimbursement for generic ketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression in 2025 — covering the full treatment package, therapy included, not just the drug. (Johnson & Johnson, which sells the patented esketamine version at up to €207 a dose against generic ketamine's roughly €6, has publicly opposed the model.) In August 2026, Norway became the second country after France to approve ketamine for acute suicidal crisis regardless of diagnosis. At TAIP, Norway's program was presented as the model Estonia's own advocacy group wants to replicate within five years.
In the UK, Imperial College London's Dr. David Erritzoe presented pilot data from St. Charles Hospital on CIM-KeT, a ketamine-assisted psychotherapy protocol now training clinicians across 17 NHS trusts: an 89% reliable improvement rate against 45% for standard NHS talking therapy — pilot numbers Erritzoe himself called preliminary, not a published trial result. Norway sent its own clinicians to the first CIM-KeT training session, Oct 3–4.
Germany's compassionate-use psilocybin program, running since July 2025 at two sites, is still narrow: after regulators questioned a 30mg dosing error, doses are now capped at 25mg, and the program only admitted its first statutory-insurance patient in early October. Prof. Gerhard Gründer predicted no licensed psychedelic in Europe for at least a couple more years, citing the field's lack of a standard-of-care comparator trial. Switzerland, running compassionate exceptions since 2014, logged 775 patients across 15 sites in 2025 — mostly psilocybin, with MDMA and LSD behind it — though speaker Helena Aicher was explicit that patients have no legal right to access; it's capacity-limited, case by case. See how each country's legal status compares on our tracker.