A longstanding commitment of Numinus Wellness Inc. (OTC:NUMIF) to collaborate with Health Canada to help shape protocols for the Special Access Program appears to be paying dividends. Last Monday, the company announced that its Montreal-based Mindspace clinic is about to become the first health-care facility in Quebec to legally treat depression with psilocybin. Numinus CEO Payton Nyquvest sat down the TDR Founder Shadd Dales to elucidate on the importance of this milestone achievement.
The Mindspace clinic approval is a byproduct of months of hard work and understanding of Health Canada requirements to move the approval process forward. Its genesis can be traced back to 2019, when Mindspace hosted one of the first training programs in Canada for clinicians wanting to learn more about helping their clients work safely with psychedelics. Minspace subsequently launched its Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration program, and in late 2020, began offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Mindspace’s acquisition by Numinus Wellness in February 2021 adjoined it with a company which itself has a strong reputation for collaboration with Health Canada. Together, the Numinus-Mindspace entity has verifiably earned the confidence of Canada’s leading governmental health authority to administer experimental psilocybin-assisted therapy to sufferers of treatment resistant depression in Quebec. Ultimately, the go-ahead signals profound trust by Health Canada in Numinus’ ability to carry out safe and effective treatments:
Shadd Dales: Why do you think ultimately, though, Health Canada granted you the opportunity to administer the first doses of this therapy in comparison, to say, other companies?
Payton Nyquvest: You know, we’ve built a long reputation with Health Canada, and we’ve been very collaborative in our approach. And really, you know, while—yes it’s newsworthy and yes it’s exciting—our focus has always been around patient access and client access, and not, you know, how do we generate the flashiest news releases possible. And I think, you know, Health Canada is looking at this from a safety lens and from a people-needing-care lens… And I think Health Canada knows the amount of rigor and depth and breadth we take in regards to our clinical protocols, clinical operations—all the way to what we’re doing out at the lab. So, you know, grateful—just very very grateful that we can be doing the work we’re doing.
On January 5, 2022, Health Canada restored its Special Access Program— abolished under former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2013—allowing health-care experts to request access to restricted psychedelic medication. Numinus is seeing a notable uptick in potential patients inquiring about receiving these treatments.
This article was originally published on The Dales Report and appears here with permission.
