Stacey Blume Frankel, LCSW

Stacey Blume Frankel is a New York therapist who prepares people for ketamine treatment and helps them integrate it afterwards. A licensed clinical social worker, she is part of the psychotherapy team at Keta Medical Center, a physician-led ketamine clinic with sites in New York and New Jersey, and she also sees clients online.

Approach

Her sessions centre on getting ready for a ketamine treatment, setting an intention for it and making sense of it afterwards, alongside conventional psychotherapy and action-focused coaching. She calls her work relational and insight-oriented, building on each client’s strengths, and draws on CBT, Jungian analysis, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness, and somatic, transpersonal and psychodynamic therapy. Dream analysis is part of her practice too. She studied psychology at the University of Michigan and social work at UCLA, where she earned her MSW, and has completed the Fluence course in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Who it is for

She works with depression, anxiety, PTSD and addiction, as well as life transitions and spiritual emergencies. At Keta, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is meant for patients already medically cleared for ketamine who want a trained therapist to help them process what comes up.

Practical details

Sessions take place in person in New York or online, and an individual session costs $300. New clients can book a free 15-minute phone consultation. At Keta, therapy usually starts with one to three preparation sessions, runs between ketamine treatments for two to four months, and ends with a return to the patient’s own therapist. The centre accepts most major insurance plans and charges $500 for a self-pay IV ketamine session.

Care and safety

The ketamine itself is given at Keta under physician-supervised protocols, and emergency room doctors and nurses oversee each treatment session. Medical clearance comes before any ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.