Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign committee spent $18,725 on a psychiatrist specializing in ketamine therapy last year, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The payments went to Dr. Brian Boyle, chief psychiatric officer at Stella, a chain of mental health clinics offering ketamine-assisted therapy and other treatments. The disbursements, listed as "leadership training and consulting," occurred in March ($11,550), May ($2,800), and October ($4,375) of 2025. It remains unclear what specific services the payments covered or who participated in them. AOC's campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Boyle, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, previously worked at McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. He focuses on interventional treatments, including ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety, as well as stellate ganglion blocks, an anesthetic injection for PTSD. Ketamine, once primarily known as a veterinary anesthetic, has gained attention for off-label mental health uses but carries risks as a dissociative drug, according to psychiatrist Dr. Simon Dosovitz.

Federal campaign finance law bars the use of donor funds for personal expenses unrelated to campaign or official duties. Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center, questioned the categorization, noting Dr. Boyle's lack of evident expertise in leadership training. "While I can understand why AOC would spend $18,000 for a shrink whose specialties include narcissistic personality disorders, using her campaign contributions for what appears to be an expense for personal use violates federal campaign finance laws," Kamenar said.

Ocasio-Cortez has publicly supported research into psychedelics and alternative therapies for mental health. She co-sponsored bipartisan legislation with Rep. Dan Crenshaw that funded Pentagon studies on such treatments for service members, which became law in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The congresswoman has also shared her own experiences with therapy, describing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot as "extraordinarily traumatizing" and confirming in 2021 that she was in therapy.

The expenditures come amid past scrutiny of AOC's campaign spending. In March 2025, Americans for Public Trust filed an ethics complaint over other expenses labeled as training, which Ocasio-Cortez dismissed on social media as "100% wrong." Her committee maintains one of the largest war chests in the House, with over $15 million reported earlier.