Andrew Penn RN, NP, CNS, PMHNP-BC

Andrew Penn, MS, CNS, ANP, PMHNP, is a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner, trained at the University of California, San Francisco, with extensive experience in the psychiatric treatment of adults at both Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Administration.

A Professor at the University of California-San Francisco School of Nursing since 2009, where he teaches psychopharmacology. He also served as the Director of Clinical Nursing Operations for Salma Health, a rapidly growing mental health startup bringing brain-health interventions, including the rapidly acting SAINT, TMS, and esketamine to patients.

He completed additional training in Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy at the California Institute for Integral Studies, MAPS, and the Usona Institute.  Currently working with the Carhart-Harris Lab at UCSF, he also worked on psychedelic studies at the UCSF-TrPR Lab.  He was a study therapist in the MAPS sponsored Phase 3 study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD published in Nature Medicine and was a Co-PI in the Phase 2 Usona sponsored study of psilocybin facilitated therapy for major depression published in JAMA.

A leading voice for nurses in psychedelic therapy, he is a cofounder of OPENurses, a professional organization for nurses interested in psychedelic research and practice and Additionally, he was a co-author in an article in the American Journal of Nursing on psychedelic assisted therapies, the first in 57 years. In addition to numerous other publications, he is an author on the new textbook: Deliberate Practice in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, published by American Psychological Association Press.

He is the Co-chair for NP Institute, a CME meeting for early career PMHNP's.  As a steering committee member for Psych Congress, he has been invited to present internationally on improving medication adherence, cannabis pharmacology, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, grief psychotherapy,  treatment-resistant depression, diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder, and the art and science of psychopharmacologic practice. He also keeps regular blogs on all things psychiatric, has been invited to speak at SXSW, the Aspen Health Ideas Festival, TEDxMarin, and the Singapore Ministry of Health, written for the Los Angeles Times, and interviewed in Forbes, and on the BBC World Service.