Faith’s Story

The good news about treatment for depression is that a large majority of people of all ages respond positively and are able to make a complete recovery. But a significant minority of them don’t get better. They have what is known as treatment-resistant depression. Faith Rockburne is one of these people.

Faith got her name from her parents’ belief that their baby girl was a gift from God.

She developed anorexia in high school, weighing as little as 80 pounds during the worst of it. She was never referred for treatment.

In fact, it would be over three decades of trying to live with mental illness before Faith got the help she needed?—help that would save her life when it all seemed to be slipping away.

For most of that time, she was self-medicating with alcohol and cannabis. It seemed to keep the demons at bay and allow her to continue a successful career at one of the big banks.

But shortly after her mother, father and best friend had all died within a two-year period, one day she just fell apart and couldn’t get out of bed. She went on long-term disability. A month later, her employer sent all of her personal belongings from her office.

She never went back to work there again.

Only then, in her fifties, did her journey of recovery begin. It was a rough road.

She tried almost two dozen kinds of antidepressants. None of them worked. As a last resort, she was given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which despite the serious side effect of permanent memory loss, is still the most effective treatment for treatment-resistant depression.

But not for her. Three in ten Canadians with depression have what is known as treatment-resistant depression. Faith was one of them.

At CAMH following another suicide attempt, she was enrolled in a group therapy program, something she had never tried before.

“I avoided that for years because with my brain so hampered by depression, I didn’t think I could deal with hearing other people talk about their own problems. But I had tried everything and I had nothing left to live for so I gave it a shot. I was so scared when I went, I was crying in the waiting room. Then someone came over to comfort me?—another patient?—and it created such a bond. I loved that group so much.That was the turning point. That was the beginning of my recovery.”

Another factor that Faith says has helped keep her mental illness at bay over the long term was the introduction of the drug ketamine, which has shown promise in alleviating treatment-resistant depression. She began using it on an experimental basis about a decade ago and continues to take micro-doses on an as-needed basis for depression and anxiety.

Now, she is working as a peer support worker for people with mental illness, a lived experience educator with CAMH’s TIDES de-escalation training program, and a lived experience advisor to the CAMH Simulation Centre. She is also living a form of domestic bliss with her husband that she had never imagined was possible in her first 50 years of living.

But as grateful as she is for getting her life back and as proud as she is of her hard-earned recovery, she is also aware how close she came to falling through the cracks.

“I was ashamed of myself for so long and then I thought, ‘No it’s amazing actually that I survived without any support.’ But I shouldn’t have to be proud of myself for surviving the system. Thirty percent of depression is treatment-resistant. That’s a big number. When ECT didn’t work for me, they should have said, ‘Okay, let’s try this.’ There was no plan for me. That’s when the despair set in. When the health care system has no plan for you, it leaves you without hope.”

Faith’s story illustrates the power of never giving up hope. CAMH is a world leader in researching new therapies and drug interventions for treatment-resistant depression, including a recent study in the world's most prestigious medical journal about the potential of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, as an effective intervention for treatment-resistant depression.

Wherever the search takes us, CAMH is dedicated to never giving up on anyone at any age, and to never stop looking for treatments, new and old, that could save a life like Faith’s.