INLIBRIUM’s program has six components, and each one has its own published evidence base. Judging the whole thing by the psychedelic literature alone - which is what both critics and marketers tend to do - gets it wrong in both directions.
Which part has the strongest evidence?
Psychedelic-assisted therapy for depression, with multiple randomized controlled trials in NEJM and JAMA Psychiatry. Executive coaching has smaller effects but was studied in working professionals inside organizations, which is our population.
Has anything like this been tested on leaders?
Leaders have been studied. Programs like this one have not. The only meta-analysis of leader-targeted interventions covers 25 studies and 2,466 leaders - and all of them were training courses. More below.
Is there evidence for combining all six?
No trial has tested this combination, and we will not claim otherwise. What the literature supports is the direction: the largest review of burnout interventions concluded that individual and structural approaches together achieve more than individual solutions alone (Lancet, 2016).
Evidence at a glance
Component
Strongest evidence
Finding
Psychedelic-assisted therapy
NEJM 2022 - 233 patients, 22 sites
A single 25 mg dose significantly reduced symptoms at three weeks. A 4.5-year follow-up found 60-80% still in clinically significant response (n = 15)
Burnout intervention
Burnout 54% to 44%; high emotional exhaustion 38% to 24%.
Executive coaching
Ten weeks of one-to-one coaching cut all three burnout dimensions, d = 0.67-0.69; organizational outcomes delta = 0.36.
Somatic regulation
g = 0.81 on stress and anxiety - the largest effect size on this page.
Functional / precision medicine
Significantly greater improvement in physical health than matched primary care.
Sleep, nutrition and metabolism
Insomnia therapy in workers g = -0.91; dietary intervention for depression d = -1.16; genotype-guided prescribing OR 1.85 for remission.
What has been tested on leaders - and what has not
Dannheim et al., 2025 is the only meta-analysis of interventions delivered to leaders: 25 studies, 2,466 supervisors and managers. It found no significant effect on psychological stress.
It is worth knowing what was actually in those 25 programs. Group workshops of 15 to 80 leaders. Psychoeducation about stress. Mindfulness apps, breathing practice, case discussions, communication skills. Most ran under eight weeks; the most intensive amounted to about 30 hours across six months.
Not one involved medical assessment, blood work or physician oversight. None built an individual plan from diagnostic measurement. None carried structured support for the months after the course ended.
We think that literature underperformed because of what it tested, not because leaders cannot be helped. Burnout at this level is not a single-system problem - it shows up in cognition, in mood, in relationships, in the body and in a person’s sense of purpose more or less at once. A stress course is being asked to hold something much larger than itself.
That reading has direct support. In a randomized trial with a waitlist control, 92 managers received ten weekly one-to-one coaching sessions - and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and professional inefficacy all fell at medium-to-large effect, d = 0.67 to 0.69. Same population as Dannheim’s 25 studies. Different intervention. Front Psychol, 2023
The same paper points at what did work. Longer programs outperformed shorter ones. Face-to-face and multi-channel delivery outperformed virtual and single-channel. Two other literatures point the same way: burnout interventions that reached into how the work was organized outperformed those that worked only on the person (SMD -0.45 vs -0.18), and coaches with access to a client’s actual working conditions outperformed those without.
Effects grew as the intervention reached further into a person’s life, and stayed there longer. That is the finding our program is built on.
Why every program is built after diagnostics
There is no standard protocol, path or dose here. Every program is designed after screening and measurement - a position with independent evidence behind it.
Finding
Study
Identical meals produced highly variable responses between individuals across 46,898 meals; a personalized algorithm then significantly improved outcomes in a blinded randomized trial
Matching a patient to the right treatment produced d = 0.58 - an effect the authors said would rival those routinely observed in comparisons of active versus control treatments
Interventions that reassess and adjust over time showed increasing efficacy compared with those tailored from a single assessment
This is why the program begins with diagnostics - bloodwork, hormones, metabolic and organ-function markers, gut health, DNA, biological age, brain imaging - and why it is re-measured rather than set once.
Sleep, nutrition and metabolism
These three usually get filed under lifestyle advice. The trial evidence puts them closer to treatment.
Sleep. A meta-analysis of 21 randomized trials in working adults found that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia improved insomnia severity at g = -0.91, and also reduced depressive symptoms, anxiety and fatigue. Face-to-face delivery produced clinically meaningful change; digital delivery did not. Sleep Med Rev, 2023
Nutrition. The SMILES trial randomized adults with moderate to severe depression to dietary support or social support alongside the treatment they were already receiving. At twelve weeks the dietary group had improved at d = -1.16, with remission in 32.3% versus 8.0% - a number needed to treat of 4.1. BMC Medicine, 2017
Metabolism and genetics. Twelve randomized trials of pharmacogenomic testing - CYP2D6 and CYP2C19, the enzymes that clear most antidepressants - found higher remission rates when prescribing was guided by genotype (OR 1.85). When someone arrives already on medication, how they metabolise it is not a detail. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 2022
None of this replaces the rest of the program. All of it changes how a person responds to it.
Safety
Exclusions applied across FDA-regulated psilocybin trials, per the US National Network of Depression Centers Task Group consensus statement: personal or family history of schizophrenia-spectrum or psychotic disorders, bipolar I or II, significant cardiovascular disease, and current lithium treatment. eClinicalMedicine, 2025
Cardiovascular response is real and transient - roughly 19 mmHg systolic and 8.7 mmHg diastolic, peaking 60-90 minutes after dosing, resolving within four to six hours. Eur J Clin Pharmacol, 2026
On lithium: an analysis of 62 co-administration reports found seizures in 47% of cases. Pharmacopsychiatry
How we apply this: safety and screening.
What we do not claim
No trial has tested this combination. Each component rests on published evidence. Running all six together for six months is a clinical judgment built on that evidence, not a validated protocol - and that is true of every six-month program, whatever it claims.
The psychedelic trials were conducted in clinical populations. Treatment-resistant depression and cancer patients, not high-functioning people asking a question about meaning.
Long-term follow-up is thin across the whole field. The longest psychedelic follow-up on this page involved 15 people.
What we are adding to it
Every discipline on this page has its own evidence base, and each one was built by studying its part in isolation. The question none of them can answer is what happens when they work on the same person at the same time.
Monika Jakobson, Co-Founder, Health & Science Director
Very few cohort studies exist on this population. Executives and founders are hard to recruit, reluctant to be studied, and rarely stay in a protocol long enough to be followed - which is a large part of why the evidence on this page is thinner than it should be.
We would rather close that gap than work around it.
The first contribution is the Executive Loneliness Index: a study of loneliness, burnout and disclosure among senior leaders. The analysis plan was written and locked before a single response was collected, so what we would report was decided in advance rather than after we saw the numbers. It publishes whichever way it comes out.
The second is our own method. We are working toward formal validation of the six-month program - building structured outcome measurement into it, so that what happens to the people we work with becomes data rather than testimonial. It will be published on the same terms as the Index.
Where our program sits
Inside the evidence: the screening protocol and exclusions, clinically supervised sessions with two facilitators and medical oversight, structured preparation and months of integration, HRV and somatic work, measurement-led health design, and coaching delivered to working leaders.
Beyond it: the combination, and the intensity. Leaders have been studied - but in eight-week courses of one method, not six-month interdisciplinary programs. Our clients are medically screened, high-functioning people asking a question about meaning. No trial tells us what happens when all six run together for six months.
We would rather say that than imply a research base that does not exist. What we can say is that every part rests on published evidence, that the safety protocol follows the strictest available standard, and that the design follows what the closest research agrees on: a short course, delivered by one person, at a distance from the rest of someone’s life, is the weakest version of this work.
We built the opposite of that - and we are measuring whether it holds.
Hardi Põder, Co-Founder, CEO
Sources
Clinical citations verified via PubMed; coaching citations from organizational psychology journals.
Goodwin G. et al. - Single-Dose Psilocybin for a Treatment-Resistant Episode of Major Depression, N Engl J Med, 2022 -
Davis A. et al. - Effects of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy on Major Depressive Disorder, JAMA Psychiatry, 2021 -
Carhart-Harris R. et al. - Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression, N Engl J Med, 2021 -
Agin-Liebes G. et al. - Long-term follow-up of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, J Psychopharmacol, 2020 -
West C. et al. - Interventions to prevent and reduce physician burnout, Lancet, 2016 -
Panagioti M. et al. - Controlled Interventions to Reduce Burnout in Physicians, JAMA Intern Med, 2017 -
Dannheim I. et al. - Effectiveness of leader-targeted stress management interventions, Scand J Work Environ Health, 2025;51(4):265-281 -
Brooks P.J. et al. - Coaching leaders toward favorable trajectories of burnout and engagement, Front Psychol, 2023;14:1259672 -
Theeboom T., Beersma B., van Vianen A. - Does coaching work? A meta-analysis, J Positive Psychology, 2014 -
Jones R., Woods S., Guillaume Y. - The effectiveness of workplace coaching, J Occup Organ Psychol, 2016 -
Goessl V., Curtiss J., Hofmann S. - The effect of heart rate variability biofeedback training on stress and anxiety, Psychol Med, 2017 -
Beidelschies M. et al. - Association of the Functional Medicine Model of Care with Patient-Reported Outcomes, JAMA Netw Open, 2019 -
US NNDC Task Group on Psychedelics - consensus statement, eClinicalMedicine, 2025 -
Cardiovascular safety of psilocybin in psychiatric practice, Eur J Clin Pharmacol, 2026 -
Nayak S. et al. - Classic psychedelic coadministration with lithium, Pharmacopsychiatry -
Zeevi D. et al. - Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses, Cell, 2015 -
DeRubeis R. et al. - The Personalized Advantage Index, PLoS One, 2014 -
Krebs P., Prochaska J., Rossi J. - A meta-analysis of computer-tailored interventions for health behavior change, Prev Med, 2010 -
Takano Y. et al. - Effect of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia in workers, Sleep Med Rev, 2023;71:101839 -
Jacka F. et al. - A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (SMILES), BMC Med, 2017;15(1):23 -
Arnone D. et al. - Effectiveness of pharmacogenomic tests including CYP2D6 and CYP2C19, Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 2022;144:104965 -