CAMH featured on 60 Minutes

The work of Dr. Jeff Daskalakis and Dr. Daniel Blumberger at CAMH’s Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention will be the subject of a special report by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

The segment, focusing on their ongoing clinical trials regarding the efficacy of Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST) for hard-to-treat depression, has been in the works for over a year.

Last September, Anderson Cooper and his 60 Minutes crew came to Toronto to consult with Dr. Daskalakis and Dr. Blumberger about how MST works and its potential to be scaled up for broader use in Canada and the United States.

They do not appear in the broadcast, which focuses on one of their patients Sharon Jakab, who had been dealing with life-threatening mental illness for much of her adult life when she enrolled in an MST clinical trial at the Temerty Centre last year.

Now, for the first time since she was a young woman, Sharon is enjoying everyday life in a way she thought would never be possible, and looks to the future with real hope.

“It’s given me my life back,” said Sharon, 61. “I can’t believe how well I feel. I feel there is hope.”

There are an estimated 600,000 Canadians like Sharon with what is sometimes referred to as treatment-resistant depression, meaning at least two clinical interventions have failed.

MST was developed as an alternative to Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), which is highly effective for hard-to-treat depression but has significant side-effects, primarily memory loss.

CAMH’s Temerty Centre is the only place in Canada currently doing research on MST and one of only five such centres in the world.

The hope is that the ongoing work being done at the Temerty Centre and its international partners will establish that MST can be just as effective as ECT without the debilitating side-effects.

The hope with the 60 Minutes segment is that it will educate an audience of millions in Canada and the United States about the power and potential of MST.

“The fact that we at the Temerty Centre were chosen to profile MST on 60 Minutes was a thrill and I am supremely confident that this opportunity will lead to greater awareness of the emerging treatment options for severe mental illness,” said Dr. Daskalakis.

“It is a privilege and honour for the work in the Temerty Centre to be recognized in this way,” said Dr. Blumberger. “It is a recognition of the importance and value of clinical research in moving new treatments forward and bringing hope to patients suffering with depression.”

The 60 Minutes segment is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. Sunday  on CBS.  Check your local listings for times and channels in your city and time zone.