Birth and death doulas have long faced resistance from medical professionals in hospitals and medical facilities. Yet, they have been instrumental in creating safe and nurturing spaces. Now, with the rapid legalization and medicalization of psychedelics, we ask: What can psychedelic practitioners learn from doulas about creating a similar safe and nurturing holding space within the cold confines of a for-profit medical system?
Panel Moderated by Caroline Dorsen
Caroline Dorsen PhD, FNP-BC, FAAN (she/her) is a nurse scholar, educator, and clinician whose passion is the intersection of health, substance use and social justice. She is currently the Associate Dean for Clinical Partnerships and Professor of nursing and public health at Rutgers University.
Caroline has been a nurse practitioner for over 20 years. She is on the Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies (BPMT) and the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Community Health Network (CHN) in NYC and is a Senior Associate Editor of the journal Annals of LGBTQ Public and Population Health. She has been a member of numerous diversity, equity and inclusion task forces, including for the Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, and is a member of the Psychiatric Mental Health Expert Panel for the American Academy of Nursing. Along with her research related to the impact of stigma and bias on health inequities, Caroline’s research has focused on the underground use of psychedelic medicines for health and healing. Her current study is examining nurses’ attitudes towards the use of psychedelics in clinical settings. She has authored or coauthored numerous papers on the use of psychedelics, including the first article on psychedelics in the American Journal of Nursing since 1964 (with co-authors Andrew Penn, Stephanie Van Hope and William (Billy) Rosa). She spoke at the 14th annual Horizons Psychedelic Conference on the role of community in psychedelic science and was an invited panelist and expert reviewer for the 2022 National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s workshop “Exploring Psychedelics and Entactogens as Treatments for Psychiatric Disorders.”
Caroline received a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, a BS in Nursing at NYU, a Master’s degree at Yale, and a PhD in Nursing Research and Theory at NYU. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in translational science at NYU Langone Health. In recognition of her expertise as an educator, Caroline was the 2020 recipient of the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award at NYU Meyers College of Nursing. In 2020, she was also the recipient of NYU’s MLK, Jr Faculty Award sponsored by the President and Provost for “exemplifying the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through teaching excellence, leadership, social justice activism, and community building.” At Rutgers, she received the “Beloved Community” Award in 2021 with colleagues from around the university for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 2021.
Caroline is joined by Panelist Cassandra Biron & Ceridwen Morris:
Cassandra Biron, LCSW is a social worker, psychedelic therapist, certified death doula, and end-of-life and grief educator. She works as an individual therapist specializing in LGBT+ identity, somatics, and grief. She also co-runs a death & grief literacy company, Your Morbid Friends, which provides educational services for private and community education. Outside of work, she loves trees and aerial yoga.
Ceridwen Morris has been a doula and childbirth educator for over twenty years, working with thousands of expectant parents in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming How to Give Birth (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2025). Morris served on the board of The Childbirth Education Association of Metropolitan New York for five years, and ran the education program at Tribeca Pediatrics for ten years. She has taught at Real Birth, City Births and NYC Birth Prep. She is also deeply involved in the arts, having started out as a curator of emerging artists in the DC punk scene in the 1990s. As a photographer and writer, her engagement with the arts is ongoing. Mostly she works at night, in hospital rooms around the city, helping people give birth.
All ticket proceeds will be donated to Cardea’s non-profit. Please consider donating.
Cardea Space is an innovative approach to growth, healing, and transformation, guided by leading practitioners in the psychedelic and psychotherapeutic arts, using space holding techniques coupled with ketamine, arts, and dialogue. Experts in holding the right space for change, our signature model focuses on your courage in the face of your challenges, and your humanity in your suffering as we walk beside you on your path towards growth. Cardea’s mission is to support social change and make ketamine therapy accessible. Through their privately funded non-profit arm, The Furthur Fund, they have treated over 60 frontline care professionals who are positively impacting their communities. We hope to hasten the healing impact of the psychedelic movement by training these professionals in psychedelic therapies and we want to support organizations who do good in the world. We serve first responders, doctors, social workers, shelter managers, EMTs, and other professionals who suffer from the inevitable burnout and trauma caused by their work. We also train members of this group in providing psychedelic-assisted care. Support the mission or apply today!
