Ben Sessa
Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Researcher
Data updated
Research Footprint
Ben Sessa appears in 16 tracked papers (2008–2025), most studied alongside MDMA, Psilocybin and LSD, across Substance Use Disorders (SUD), PTSD and Safety & Risk Management.
Most-cited paper: Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging (875 citations).
Frequent co-authors: David Nutt, Thomas Williams and Robin Carhart-Harris.
Publication Landscape
How the 16 papers Blossom tracks for Ben Sessa line up by year, topic, and journal. These are the psychedelic-relevant papers in Blossom's records as of July 2026, not a complete bibliography.
How has Ben Sessa's publishing grown?
SourcedTracked papers by publication year; 2 earlier papers published before 2011. Click a year for the running total.
Don't read as total output: only the 16 of 16 tracked papers with a recorded publication date are counted, and these are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks, not a complete bibliography. The current year is still filling in.
What does Ben Sessa publish on?
SourcedTracked papers per topic. Orange marks the largest research focus.
Don't read shares as adding to 100%: a paper tagged with several topics counts once per topic. These are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks, not a complete bibliography.
Where does Ben Sessa publish?
SourcedTracked papers per journal. Orange marks the most-used journal.
Counts the journal recorded on each tracked paper; preprints and papers with no journal on file are not shown. These are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks, not a complete bibliography.
Background & Research
Ben Sessa is a UK-based psychiatrist and clinical researcher whose work spans clinical trials, neuroimaging studies and scholarly reviews of psychedelic medicines. He has been an active advocate for re-evaluating classic psychedelics in psychiatry and is author of accessible syntheses on the history and therapeutic potential of these compounds. In recent years he has been centrally involved in early-phase clinical research investigating MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for alcohol use disorder, reporting safety and tolerability data and exploring drinking outcomes and psychosocial functioning in follow-up analyses.
Sessa's research profile also includes collaborations on neuroimaging studies of LSD and on mechanistic work linking the psychedelic state to large-scale brain dynamics (for example, broadband cortical desynchronization and related models of altered consciousness). In addition to clinical trial work, he has produced book chapters and reviews that situate contemporary clinical research within historical, sociological and policy contexts, contributing to the broader discourse on how psychedelic therapies might be integrated into modern psychiatric practice.
Key Impact
An early and visible figure in the contemporary psychedelic renaissance, notable for initiating clinical MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trials for alcohol use disorder and for contributions linking psychedelic phenomenology to neuroimaging findings and clinical safety research.
Collaboration Network
22 collaborators· click a node to visit their profile
Full network →Collaboration Network
See Ben Sessa's full collaboration network, shared papers, and research connections.
Compounds
Topics
Top Collaborators
Top Collaborators
Unlock clinical summaries, full texts, and related trial mapping.
Affiliations
Institutions, companies, and organisations Ben Sessa is associated with.
CAPS Consultancy
Consultant Agency for Psychedelic Services (CAPS) is a UK-based advisory practice led by Dr Ben Sessa, providing consultancy for individuals, clinics, companies, and investors developing psychedelic and medical-cannabis services.
View stakeholder →Awakn Life Sciences
Public BiotechAwakn Life Sciences is a former UK-based biopharmaceutical company whose ketamine and esketamine alcohol-use-disorder assets were acquired by Solvonis Therapeutics in May 2025. Its lead programmes are now represented operationally by Solvonis as SVN-001 (IV ketamine plus CBT for severe AUD) and SVN-002 (esketamine oral thin film for US AUD). This record is retained for historical provenance of the Awakn-origin assets and source trail.
View stakeholder →Imperial College London
academicThe Centre for Psychedelic Research, led by Professor David Nutt and Dr. David Erritzoe, focuses heavily on the action of psychedelic drugs in the brain and their clinical utility as aides to psychotherapy. Thanks to their extensive neuroimaging studies, this group has proposed vital mechanisms for how psychedelics work, including the Entropic Brain Theory and REBUS (RElaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics).
View stakeholder →