Research
Dr. Grob’s research focuses on clinical research with psychedelics. Currently, he is conducting a double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of the safety and efficacy of psilocybin treatment in patients with end-of-life medical illness experiencing high levels of psychological demoralization and existential crisis.
Biography
Charles S. Grob, M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He previously held faculty positions at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of California at Irvine.
He has conducted approved clinical research with psychedelics since the early 1990s. From 2004-2008 he was the Principal Investigator of the first study in several decades to examine the use of a psilocybin treatment model for patients with advanced-cancer anxiety. He has also conducted research into the range of effects of MDMA, in both normal volunteers and in a selected subject population of adult autistics with severe social anxiety. And, he has conducted a series of ayahuasca research studies in Brazil.
Over the last thirty years Dr. Grob has published numerous articles and chapters on psychedelics in the medical and psychiatric literatures and he is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader (Putnam/Tarcher, 2002), co-editor (with Roger Walsh) of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics (SUNY Press, 2005) and co-editor (with James Grigsby) of the recently published Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens (Guilford Press, 2021). He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute.