S1E9: Mental Health with Dr. Juveria Zaheer and Sandi Treliving from CAMH

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This podcast is brought to you by Gensler Wealth. Normally, at the start of each podcast I provide a disclaimer saying that the information discussed is general in nature, it's not tailored to your specific investing circumstances, it's not a solicitation, etc. Etc. In this case. Today we are talking about mental health and and I will say investing in your own mental health or investing in supporting mental health research and care in Canada is definitely a worthwhile investment. Please enjoy the podcast. Today on the Ginser Wealth Podcast we are talking about mental health. We have Dr. Javeria Zaheer, medical head at CAMH, and Sandy Treliving, director on CAMH Foundation's Board. We're going to talk about the state of mental health today, the future of mental health care and what is currently happening and what the future looks like at camh. This one is important. Let's go. Welcome everyone to the Gensler Wealth Unlimited podcast. This is a very special edition, I would say, and hopefully more like these to come where we're going to talk about things that are not always are not investment and economic related. And this is something very near and dear to my heart, which is mental health and the importance of mental health. As a background. I've been involved in working with the foundation board of camhouse for a while, the center for Addiction and Mental Health, and we are very, very fortunate to have two of the leaders at CAMH in a couple different areas. First, Dr. Javeria Zaheer is a clinician scientist with the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and medical head in the Gerald Sheff and Chanitha Katchen Emergency Department at camh. She's also a new member of the CAMH Foundation Board. She's an Assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Dr. Zaheer's research focuses on suicide, gender and culture. She's also involved in mixed methods, program evaluation and health services research. Dr. Zaheer was named to Canada's Top 40 under 40 list for 2020 and recognized by her peers as CAMH's Physician of the Year in 2019. Dr. Zaheer's groundbreaking research has been transforming the way we understand suicide in Canada and we look forward to hearing from you. Juveria, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

This is such a pleasure, My pleasure. And also equally very excited to have Sandy Treliving here. Sandy is a dedicated philanthropist, an advocate for mental health, a supporter of Canadian arts and culture, and a champion of healthy living. Like many Canadians, Sandy has been directly impacted by mental illness. Her brother lives with schizophrenia, which inspired her to dedicate her time and resources to various mental health initiatives. In 2014, she became a director on CAMH Foundation's board. And in 2020, she and her family became founding funders of CAMH's Woman Mind, a community of philanthropists committed to closing the gender gap in mental health. And we'll hopefully get to touch on that initiative as well. And I also hope Sandy will share with us her joyous July campaign, which is active now. Likely by the time this podcast is released, it will be over, but I'm sure Sandy will be delighted to have support, even post July. And if you follow her on Instagram, you can see Sandy do some amazing cartwheels. Sandy, thank you so much for making the time. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Brian. It's a little embarrassing, but thank you.

Thank you.

I think it's great extra information on.

I think it's amazing. Good for you. Before we jump right in, the goal that I have for today in having this podcast and having these wonderful guests on. I think it's important that we talk about mental health today. And so that's the first sort of stop on our journey here. But even more importantly, it's what does the future of mental health care look like? And what. Because we have two individuals here very involved with camh. What is happening at CAMH and what's on the horizon for mental health care in Canada and perhaps the world. So that's what I hope we're going to cover here. And before we dive in, maybe both Juveria and Sandy could provide a little bit of background better than I can do. How did you get to the place you are here in the mental health arena? Why? And I know Jabaria has an interesting first year psychiatry resident story. Maybe. Anyways, I'll turn it over to you, Jabaria, first. And just to give our listeners a little bit of background in color.

No. Thank you so much, Brian. So I went to medical school at Queen's University in Kingston and had a really wonderful experience there. And I came to Toronto to do my residency and wasn't really sure what to expect. I knew I loved psychiatry because it's such an honor to hear people's stories and to speak with people on sometimes the most difficult days of their lives. And I was always drawn to emergency psychiatric care because that's when it feels like you can make the most difference, help people, give them some hope, talk to their families. And so when I came to Toronto, I didn't know what emergency psychiatry looked like in Toronto. And I certainly didn't know much about CAMH. And I remember, oh my goodness, like 13 or 15 years ago, walking into the CAMH emergency department and just you felt like you were at home because here was a place that was the only dedicated standalone psychiatric emergency department in Ontario. So you didn't have to compete with people who are having very serious medical issues, whether it's a, a heart attack or a stroke, your depression, anxiety, substance use, suicidal thoughts, schizophrenia. That was the emergency. And when you have a place that's sort of built to treat people who are suffering from mental health issues, you can feel it. You can feel it in the walls and you can feel it in the staff and you can feel it in the people that we helped. And I walked in there in March 2008 and never really walked out. So completed my residency training, completed my research training. So I'll focus on suicide and suicide prevention, which makes a lot of sense because people who come to see us are often suffering from suicidal thoughts and have had leadership roles within the department. So I managed resident education for many years and then now I'm the medical head of the CAMH emergency department. And every day is a joy for us. And we think about how we're transforming mental health in the future. And some things that we think about are how do we ensure that we have gender affirming care in the CAMH emergency department? How do we make sure that we meet the very complex and comprehensive needs of people with mental health issues and addictions issues, including opioid and alcohol use disorders. And really focused on. And Sandy will speak more to this. How do we integrate research into acute care settings at camh? Because when I, you know, take my child to sick kids or if we take a love going to Princess Margaret, there's research happening in acute care settings and we're doing the same thing at camh. And so that's another area we're really passionate about.

Amazing. That'll I hope covered in a lot of detail a little bit later in our discussion here. So that's great. And what about you, Sandy? I know you're a champion for CAMH and mental health and in everything you do. So maybe give us the story. How do we. How did you get to here? How did we get to hear with you?

How did we get to hear. So, you know, first of all, wow, thank you, Ryan, for hosting the two of us. And doctors here is one of my favorite people at camh and just listening to the light that comes from her and the fact that she is dealing with individuals that are very, very ill. And I can't help but think how comforted they must feel and their families when they see individuals like doctors to greet them. And it's just amazing. I cannot thank you enough. So I come to the mental health space because of a personal story. It's my brother's story, and it's. And it's our family story. My brother suffers from schizophrenia, and very common that it will affect individuals in their teens, as it did with my brother. You know, somebody who had lots of friends, played hockey, played golf, and then in high school, behavioral issues that started back in. Now I'm talking. I'm old, so I'm talking in the 1970s. He, you know, our family doctor would not believe that there was anything else other than rebellious behavior. Well, unfortunately, that was not the case. And he was experiencing psychosis. And then it's the trajectory of not being able to get care and help and then going through the system which, you know, sadly incarcerates. And that is your. Your ability to finally psychiatrist. So a lot of pain along the way because he was not diagnosed early, he was not treated early. And we know that we can help people. And if we can get to people early, stage one, similar with other illnesses that affect our bodies, we can. We can have great outcomes for people with mental health issues. So the impact for him has been. He's still living. It's an amazing story. He's turned 70 this month. You know, that's 50 years of suffering with a mental health issue. And that's taken a toll on. Obviously, it's taken a big toll on our family, too, you know, So I come to this because I. I've had enough, really. I don't want any other family, and I don't want any other individual to have to suffer. And I think we can do better. I know we can do better. And so I try to inspire people to see that mental health is health and that we can actually make a commitment to do something better. But it's going to require funding and it's going to require research, and it's going to require all of us together working on this. And being a good, healthy society means that we have to have healthy individuals. All of us have to be healthy individuals. So I will work tirelessly until I can't do it anymore.

Until you can't do the cartwheels.

No, I can tell you can't do the cartwheels.

Appreciate that. And again, I think we'll dive into sort of what we're, we're and you and Juveria are trying to achieve and build here. Before we do that, and thank you for that introduction, by the way. Before we do that, maybe we can give the listeners just a picture of what does mental health or mental illness look like today? You know, I found a few stats, but I'm reading the stats, admittedly, and Dr. Zaheer is seeing it day by day, but the stats that I found were pretty shocking. One in five Canadians will experience a mental illness this year. 50% of Canadians will have or have had a mental illness by age 40. 450 million people globally are living with a mental illness. 50% of all mental illnesses begin by 14 and a half years old. And extremely tragically, every 40 seconds, one person dies by suicide. I mean, these statistics are heart wrenching. Juberia, those are stats, but what are you seeing on the ground at CAMH and over these past 13 years or so that you've been there? But I'm also interested, what about the last couple years? Because the world's been upended completely by Covid. Can you put some meat on the bones of those stats and share with us what you're seeing?

Yeah, and when you hear those stats, you think about the population, you know, 50% of people, but then you also think about individuals like your family, your community. And I was so struck by what Sandy said about, you know, going to the family physician or not, not having the language even within a family to talk about mental illness. And certainly, you know, in my Indian Muslim family, there were similar stories. You know, we just don't know how to talk about mental health and mental illness. And I think when I started my training about 15 years ago, we in the CAMH emergency department would see something like 350, 375 visitors per month. Last month we saw maybe 1450. So what that tells us is that people are more aware of mental health. People are not suffering in silence. You know, when families and communities and philanthropists lend their name to the cause of mental health, there's a trickle down effect. It becomes more normalized within communities. And the more that we speak out, the more people may feel comfortable in seeking help and support. And so we know that sometimes demand can outplace supply. So as we raise awareness, it's really imperative that we also invest in service delivery and research and operational structures and infrastructure. And that's kind of where we are. You know, I think in the last two years, more people have asked me about mental health and mental illness. I'm sure Sandy would say the same thing. And more people have asked me about suicide and suicide prevention than ever before. I think the COVID 19 pandemic was this huge trauma for all of us. It was a collective trauma. And we know that trauma is linked with poorer mental health, greater anxiety, increased suicidal thoughts. And when people say, well, what did you see in those early days in March 2020? You know, the world changed within a week. And initially we experienced what most emergency departments did across Canada, across the world. We didn't know where everybody was. People stopped coming to us. And that's really, really concerning. Right. Because I'm sure all three of us know the impact that it had on our own lives. You know, I'm a parent of two of a nine year old and a four year old and that four year old I think has lived most of her life in the pandemic. And so we know how hard it is for us with all of our privilege. Imagine people who are experiencing housing insecurity, people who are older, adult in long term care, people who may have a lot of trauma in their home environment, young people and older folks who can't get out of these environments, people who are being forced to work in unsafe and really scary conditions, or who have been laid off work and may not have the financial ability to work. And then we also think about people with severe and persistent mental illness. You have a care team, you have appointments, you have a structure. A lot of those things are kind of taken away. That being said, some people with mental illness talked about doing a little bit better in the early stages of the pandemic because there was a feeling of we're all in this together. Some of your stressors like work were taken away. Things like CERB were extraordinarily important, providing people with financial stability, which is a huge piece. But as the pandemic has rolled through, what we're seeing is a few things. One, we look at people who are vulnerable. So we see so many young people. We see 16 and over. And imagine, I think all of us can remember that feeling of being in your last year of high school and then going to university, but then you have to go home from university because you can't stay there. You have to switch to virtual care, which is all of us know how hard that is on our mental health. And this sort of feeling of missing out in this like really important transitional age I think was huge. People with older adults, you have very reasonable worries, like I'm worried I'm going to get sick, sick. I'm Worried I'm going to be unwell. I'm worried that I'm going to lose people that I love. And people are working overtime to kind of manage their finances and manage their families. And we've seen so much stress. I think it's also really important to remember that the risk factors for suicide actually map onto a lot of what happened during the pandemic. So, for example, one of the risk factors for suicide is social isolation. Well, we have more isolation, financial stress, more financial stress, decreased access to care. We have difficulties accessing care, exposure to domestic violence or trauma. We see that to. We know that access to means is really important. And we know that people may be prescribing larger amounts of medication because you can't go in to see your doctor or in the US we saw a real spike in gun ownership, which is also an independent risk factor for suicide. All these moving pieces, I think, make us think about the fact that mental health, as any said, affects all of us, and it's very integrated. It takes all of us to provide care. But there have been. I think it's important to point out a lot of positives. So, for example, we did a research study where we interviewed people with lived experience of mental illness and suicidality. And they told us that for the first time, they were able to connect with their psychotherapist virtually or over the phone. So when you can't get out of bed, that's like an amazing gift. I think increased discussion about depression and anxiety has also been really helpful. You know, people are asking each other how they feel a lot more. Like corporations and companies are checking in a lot more with their employees. So I think that, like, increased empathy has been really helpful. And I think one of the greatest lessons of the pandemic is like, look what we have been able to accomplish with COVID in two years. We have the ability to recognize cases. There was a development of vaccines, There was a vaccine rollout. There was financial support for people who are affected. Now imagine if we could take that ingenuity and investment and apply it to mental health, you know, and to address the cracks and fissures of an underfunded mental health system. Investing in research and research infrastructure and service delivery and people, whether that's clinicians or whether that's the patients themselves. I think in spite of how dark it's been, I think there's a lot to be hopeful for.

Yeah, no, that's great. Thanks. It's amazing because when you first mentioned the first statistic, an increase from. What did you say? 375 people a month to 1450. My initial thought was, wow, a lot more mental health. And that's not a great thing. But you immediately turned it into, that's a positive because it means more people are speaking about it, coming, getting the care they need. And my brain didn't naturally go that way, which might be why Sandy was saying, you're such a positive person in the space so you can look at things too two different ways, and that's a positive way to look at it.

Can I just add on to that, Brian? I do remember having a conversation. I was concerned when we were rolling out one of our anti stigma campaigns. And these are all really great, great messages to send to educate people. And I was worried that we were going to get overloaded in the emergency room. So I actually spoke to somebody that was working in the emergency room and I said, linda, is this like, how does this impact us when we send these messages out? And she said, oh, my goodness, we are overrun. It's unbelievable. And I said, oh, no. And she goes, no, Sandy, it's great. They know we're here, they're coming for help. And that, again, back to what you said, it just triggered something for me. And it was like, yes, this is exactly what we need to continue doing.

Amazing. So before we jump into what CAMH is doing, which we will dive into deeply, maybe Javeria, just give a little bit of color on some of the challenges that researchers face when it comes to treating mental health. This is clearly not an area where I have expertise, but, you know, I think there's been some lack of understanding about the brain because the funding and the focus has not necessarily historically been in mental health relative to some of the other more physical types of illnesses. There may be some limitations as a result on the research and treatment side. What has it been like for the last 10 years in this area from a research and treatment perspective?

I think that's a really wonderful question. And I think, you know, sometimes in mental health we swing from one extreme to another. So for a long time there was this idea that if you were suffering and you couldn't go to work or there was something wrong, it was, as Sandy pointed out earlier, it was rebellion or a moral failing or families that weren't sticking together. And so because we had this very social understanding of mental illness, why would you invest in mental health treatment? Why would you invest in drugs and in imaging and in service delivery? And then I think something really neat happened. And recently Sandy and I both looked back at the CAMH foundation campaigns over the years. And then it was sort of revolutionary 10 or 15 years ago to say actually there's something going on with your brain and we can help you and there's treatment and there's hope and there's help and then we swing to kind of this biological sort of place where we're investing in drug trials and imaging and genetics. And I think all of that is so, so important. And I think the most exciting thing that's happening in mental health research is we're almost finding a new way forward, a happy medium. And I think working at camh, I see that every day where we say okay to have depression means that there's probably a biological component, there may be a social component. To get care, we need to have X, Y and Z into place. We need to engage with people with lived experience, patients and families to develop together interventions at work, especially for communities that are traditionally left behind. And so if we can invest in service delivery and testing new interventions and co developing them, and we can invest in personalized and equitable medicine, which a lot of that is happening at CAMH with our aboriginal service, with our addiction service, our child and youth service, and then we can also invest in brain and behavior and we can invest in not just doing the study, but actually bringing the study to the bedside. And so in my own field of work, which is suicide and suicide prevention, we just received funding from the CAMH foundation actually for a study that's going to look at 500 people who come through the CAMH emerge with suicidal thoughts, people who are traditionally excluded from research because people are really risk averse. And breast cancer research, for example, gets about $700 million in funding a year. Suicide kills more people and receives maybe 1/10 of that, a fraction. And that's not to say that one is more important than the other, it's that we need to invest in all. So in this, the study that was just funded, people who are coming in with suicidal thoughts, we want to understand them from a biological perspective. So genetics and blood work, we also want to understand them from a social perspective, talking to them, talking to their families, understanding their circumstances, understanding their history of trauma, understanding their patterns of service utilization and healthcare access. And we want to follow them over time to see what actually helps. And so when you can integrate all of these different perspectives, which I think is something CAMH is really good at, that cross pollination, the idea that it takes a village to solve a problem, I think is really positive. And I think the last thing I'll say is That I think one of the reasons people get nervous about mental health research, it's like, well, are you telling me there's a pill for, you know, feeling bad or for feeling worried or to solve everybody's problems? And I think what we're saying is absolutely not. We need a team approach and we need to understand that people have biology, psychology, culture, social factors and address all of them together. And so we do this in cancer care. Right. If you go in to see if you have cancer and you see your team, you don't just have a person who's doing the chemotherapy, you also have a surgeon potentially. You also have a radiation oncologist. You may also have a social worker, you may also have mental health support, you may have someone who's going to help you get from your appointment to the hospital if you have mobility issues. So it takes all of us. And I think that's the direction I hope we're going.

Right, well, thank you. So speaking of direction, we're going maybe Sandy, because you're very involved obviously on the foundation and where some major initiatives are happening and looking to fund some major initiatives. This is a broad big question, but what does the future of mental health care in Canada look like from your vantage point, your perspective and everything that you're involved with as it relates to CAMH and others? What should people be aware of that is here or coming?

I have to say that I find this a very exciting time for us. As Javeria was just saying as well, a lot of hope. But specifically I think for all Canadians, we should be excited. We have at CAMH made a huge investment in the future and the future for us is building literally a world class facility for research, for discovery and innovation. And this is going to house the most incredible minds that will be working together, collaborating amongst themselves, amongst teams that are international as well. We will be able to move at a speed that is faster than we have ever been able to do before. We are going to reduce the times that it takes currently to get to our treatment care outcome phase and we'll be doing that with AI. We will be doing that with just the amount of people that we are bringing on board. We're known as a global leader already in science and care and this is just going to be accelerated. So I am thrilled that we are going to be building this research center on the campus at CAMH and true bench to bedside care. And it's just I've never seen something quite as exciting. I've been in, in the CAMH world when we Went from the old buildings that truly looked like prison cells to the last fundraising campaign, which brought us to these incredible care centers that we have that are so respectful and dignified, that our patients are truly appreciating. And our staff, the people that are working there too, you know, we are actually giving them a safe environment to do the best work that they can do as well. So the trajectory is going in the right direction. And I couldn't be more satisfied with the focus, the vision, and the group that we have together to ensure that this happens.

That's great. Yeah. I was lucky enough just before the pandemic to take a tour of the new building. Maybe it is now, it wasn't fully finished by any stretch, but to see the contrasting difference between the old, which I had been in, and the new, it's. It's. It's unbelievable. It's really revolutionary. And then as we moved to Covid and everything went virtual, I got a number of virtual tours of the new building, which is good because you could see the whole place in half an hour very easily. And it is really remarkable. And so for anyone listening, if this is of interest and you want to get a glimpse into the future, reach out to me and we'll see what we can organize because it's really night and day. So we've got this new, new facility. My understanding is CAMH has maybe four or five really focus key areas of research and care. You know, unlocking mysteries of the brain, personalizing mental health care, transforming youth mental health, prioritizing health equity, which Juveria has already spoken about a little bit, Building better brain health in late life. Javeria, can you maybe just for folks listening, because mental health is a very big topic, covers a wide spectrum. Can we hone in on a couple of these, maybe just. Just as examples of what's happening in mental health, in chemh, et cetera?

Absolutely. And I'm very happy to kind of go over, give you a quick virtual tour, in a sense, of some of the work that's happening at camh. And I really like how you divided it up into these key research areas and then we can talk a little bit about each one. And so the first that you mentioned is unlocking the mysteries of the brain. So after all of these years, we actually know very little about the brain, although that's been revolutionized and leaps and bounds of movement over the last couple of decades. So there's really innovative work happening at camh, for example, trying to understand receptors and genetics of postpartum depression. So to develop new interventions to prevent postpartum depression in women. We also have a lot of work happening in psychogenomics, which means how can we understand how my body may respond differently to a medication than Sandy's body? And wouldn't it be cool if we could figure out what treatments would work ahead of time? So this kind of personalized medicine component, which is really, really innovative and exciting. As a parent, I think a lot about youth mental health. And we know that early adulthood, adolescence is the onset of the majority of mental illnesses. And we know that young people are at the forefront of revolutionizing anti stigma access to care. And we learn so much from them. And at camh, there's extraordinary work happening where they engage young people and their expertise and their families to kind of co develop interventions that work, which is really, really exciting and to follow young people over time. So if you have a young person who has the early signs and symptoms of psychosis, what if you can follow them for three years from both a clinical and research perspective to understand how two people who look very similar at age 16 look very different at age 24? And are there things that we can do to help person A and person B that is like very much personalized and in keeping with their values? I think we talk a lot about health equity. So equity doesn't mean that every single person who walks through the door gets the same treatment. It means that people walk through the door and get the treatment that they need and deserve. And then that treatment isn't necessarily designed by people who don't understand their cultural background or their gender identity. That it's done in an affirming way. And that makes it a lot easier for people to seek care. So if you have a child who is non binary to know that you're going to a safe space and people will use the correct pronouns and research is happening in this area, you may feel much more comfortable bringing them to a place like CAMH than you may have 10 or 15 years ago. And we think about the whole lifespan. We talk a lot about child and youth, but thinking about older adults too. And we know that for many older adults, the thought of having dementia or having depression in late life is so frightening and disheartening. And especially as culturally we move to kind of less collectivist societies, there's more of a feeling of kind of being alone or being on your own and then Covid on top of all of that. So how do we build better brain health in older people? How do we identify people who are at risk early and change the trajectory of their illness. How do we incorporate treatment for dementia and for mood and for. Think about treatments that work elsewhere and apply them into this population that may not have gotten the help and support otherwise. And I think, like, it's really important to point out we think about dementia a lot. But, you know, 10 to 15 people over 65 are experiencing a current depressive episode or depressive symptoms. And I think that's another really important treatment target. So I think at chemh, one of the goals in terms of research is thinking about the entire lifespan, thinking about prevention rather than treatment, thinking about accessing care that is meaningful and that makes sense in a timely fashion, and understanding all of the different contributors and doing really innovative work to give people kind of a tool bag that we could help them work with, to manage and support them. And not just to promote going back to how you were, but to promote something even better to promote recovery and resilience and transformation.

Unbelievable. It sounds like really CAMH is there to help, you know, anyone with any mental illness that may arise and covers the whole spectrum. It's really amazing. On that note, if anyone's listening to this and feels they need some help, what should they do? Javeria, how do they get to the right place?

Yeah. And if somebody's listening today and they, they feel like they're struggling just to remember that you are deserving of hope and help and that you're not alone and that people care about you. Depression and anxiety, they can be really cruel illnesses because they can make us feel that we don't matter or people don't care about us or nothing will ever get better. But to know that people do love you and care about you. If you ever feel unsafe, I know it can feel really scary, but it's good to talk to someone. Talk to your family doctor, go to your nearest emergency department, we're always open 247 at CAMH. And then I think too, just to open the dialogue to do your research. The ChemH CA website is so useful in terms of understanding how Covid can impact your mental health, understanding different diagnoses, understanding what you might be going through. I think a lot about Sandy's work at Women Mind, which is so transformative, not only supporting women scientists like me, but also supporting women to get high quality mental health treatment. So to know that no matter who you are, if you're a man or a woman, if you're trans or non binary, if you are older or younger, that there's a space for you and that you fit and you're deserving of hope and care. So start at camhcia. There's lots of resources available there.

Amazing. Thank you so much. And then, Sandy, I'll ask you a similar but different question. I hope people are listening to this and go, wow, this is some serious research. You know, Canada, Toronto, CAMH is, is and is going to be world leading in this area. What if someone wants to help support this, this great work that Juveria and CAMH and you are doing at the foundation? What does that look like for folks that want to be involved in that way?

You know, a great gift is time. A greater gift, indeed right now is money. And I know that we're talking to an investment community, and I would suggest that this is a very good investment for you to make.

I'm not allowed to give official investment advice on the podcast, but I'll make an exception here and say I agree with you.

So, yes, and of course, we also know that there are some tax initiatives involved in that too, so I could talk about that. But, yeah, we truly do need funding to ensure that we are doing the studies that we need to do. If you look back into the early 1960s and President Nixon at the time declared a war against cancer. And in the last 60 years, billions and billions of dollars have gone into cancer research, and cancer is not as scary anymore. We don't get that diagnosis and we're automatically, I have a limited time left on this planet. That doesn't happen anymore. And that is because of great research that has taken place over the last 60 years. Can you imagine? Can you just imagine if we had had that money? Not to say that it's not worthy going into the coffers of the cancer Society, into those wonderful hospitals, because it is. But had a portion of that money gone into studying the brain, you know, where would we have been? A much healthier society.

Right.

It just, to me, makes sense as the best investment that we can all make right now. And so we are happy to speak to you anytime at the CAMH foundation. Again, going to camh.ca will give you information. Reach out to Brian anytime. He is a huge supporter at camh, the foundation, and we're very thankful for that. And I am happy to chat with anybody anytime. So let's do this together.

Amazing. So before we bring this to a close, one thing I do with all my guests. So the podcast is called the Unlimited Podcast. We like to think at Gensler wealth, you know, we use unlimited as a tagline or a keyword. You know, your wealth unlimited. We can look at anything, we can help with anything. And so I like to ask my guests, if you weren't doing what you're doing now, if you have unlimited options in the world, you could be doing anything, whatever. What does unlimited look like to each of you? So, Sandy, unlimited, what would you be doing? Maybe you're doing exactly what you are doing.

I wouldn't change a thing. I really wouldn't change a thing. I think my brother's illness for some odd reason has put me into this place and I'm grateful to be a part of this incredible team and in the journey that we're on. Right. I wish we had got here sooner, but I'm pushing through and I wouldn't change a thing.

Amazing. What about you, Javeria? You can't say the same answer as Sandy, though.

Just kidding, said it. I felt terrible because I knew what I was going to say. You know, I was reflecting recently. This sounds so silly and Sandy is well aware because she helped me out in this situation many times. But my little brother was on a television show called Survivor recently.

No way.

Yeah, he did. It was his lifelong dream to go on. He's a veterinarian. He's much younger than I am and he's much funnier than I am. And he went on this show that was his dream since he was 10 years old when he was 30, and when he got home, he said to me, you know, Javeria, when I was there, I felt more like myself than ever before and I felt like I knew exactly what to do next. And I thought about that and I thought about my own career. And being in the CAMH emergency department is, is the place professionally where I've had that feeling, where I know what to do next and I know what's important to me and I know that I have the confidence that what I'm doing is meaningful. And if my day to day is like as cool as going on a TV show, that I better not change my job anytime soon. I wish I had two of me and I wish that I had, as every, you know, 39 year old mom will tell you, a little bit more in the way of work, life, balance and support. But those are small things and that's like a whole other podcast. But I'm not sure I would change anything except for maybe more time off and a time machine and the ability to clone oneself.

I would take that too, and the world would be a better place with two of you for sure. So thank you both very, very much. Really appreciate you taking the time and sharing with us the state of mental health, your involvement, what CAMH is doing, it is the extremely important work is extremely needed. I'm honored to be involved and just thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you at our next gathering in person as we keep pushing this mission forward.

Thank you Brian. Thanks so much for hosting us. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Bye Bye.

This has been Brian's conversation.

Dr. Javeria Zahir @ Sandy Trilipa. We hope that you've enjoyed this conversation on mental health and learning more about.

The initiatives at Toronto's camh.

If you're interested in learning more or.

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