Scott Shannon

Scott Shannon, MD, is a psychiatrist, author, researcher, and psychedelic pioneer who has spent more than five decades exploring the nature of consciousness and healing. His interest in consciousness began at the University of Arizona in the 1970s, where he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the subject. Following medical school, he incorporated MDMA-assisted psychotherapy into his clinical practice before the medicine was scheduled in 1985 and has remained at the forefront of its return to modern medicine.

Dr. Shannon completed his psychiatry residency through Columbia University and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship with a cross-cultural emphasis at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of four influential books on holistic and integrative mental health, including the field's first comprehensive textbook on integrative psychiatry.

In 2010, Dr. Shannon co-founded Wholeness Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he helped build one of the nation's largest multidisciplinary integrative psychiatry practices while advancing a systems-based, transformative model of care. A past president of two national medical organizations, he served as a Principal Investigator for the Phase III clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD and has contributed to research involving cannabidiol (CBD), ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT. In 2019, he founded the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute (PRATI), a nonprofit dedicated to educating healthcare professionals in psychedelic-assisted therapies.

An internationally recognized educator, Dr. Shannon lectures widely on consciousness, psychedelic medicine, integrative psychiatry, and the future of transformative mental healthcare.