From Family Mysteries to Mind Benders

Mental health advocate Sonia Gray (My Family Mystery) fronts a new Sky NZ Originals series about psychedelic drugs’ potential to address psychiatric distress in this country.

It premieres June 8 on Sky Open, Sky Go and Neon; view the trailer here.

Here’s the media release:

Sky New Zealand Originals docuseries Mind Menders explores a new frontier of medicine that may be the solution to Aotearoa’s mental health crisis

Sky New Zealand Originals all new two-part documentary series Mind Menders will air on Sky Open on Sundays at 8.30pm from 8 June, with both episodes available to view on Neon and Sky Go from this date.

Join presenter Sonia Gray – a long-time advocate for normalising conversation around mental health who has bravely shared her own struggles with anxiety – as she goes on a mission to investigate whether psychedelic drugs could offer better treatment options for New Zealand’s ongoing mental health crisis.

For decades it’s been suggested that psychedelics could help address a range of mental health afflictions, but the ‘war on drugs’ in the late 1960s and 70s cancelled promising research – until recently.

Now Aotearoa is paving the way in this pioneering field. While exploring our burgeoning psychedelic revolution, Sonia meets with leading medical and science professionals working in the field of psychedelics and discovers that LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin are showing great promise in resetting our brains and treating anxiety, severe depression, and addiction.

In episode one, Sonia meets with her ‘psychedelic sherpa’, leading journalist and researcher Russell Brown, who helps breakdown some of the myths around certain drugs, and Sonia accepts an offer to participate in a microdosing LSD trial, the brainchild of

Professor Suresh Muthukumaraswamy at Auckland University, in a quest to treat her anxiety.

We follow the highs and lows of Sonia’s personal journey; meet a brother and sister who self-medicate with psilocybin, also known as “magic mushrooms”; and find out about this drug’s healing power to treat depression and addiction.

Alongside tracking Sonia’s psychedelic trials, episode two sees Sonia meet with healers, iwi leaders and a leading Māori entrepreneur, behind a world-first marae-led trial using indigenous mushrooms to help treat methamphetamine addiction in Tairāwhiti.

Compelling and at times confronting, Mind Menders will take audiences on a journey of discovery which may change how we view and regulate psychedelic drugs. Could the answer to helping treat mental health be in the very substances that we’ve been taught to fear and avoid?

 Mind Menders is a Diva Productions production made with the support of NZ on Air, directed by Felicity Morgan-Rhind, Doug Dillaman and Peter Day, produced by Arani Cuthbert.