'I have a life back': How ketamine therapy is helping these Nova Scotians find relief from depression
Psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Nunes says the drug is safe at low doses in a medically controlled environment
For decades, Sherri Topple's world was overshadowed by the crushing weight of depression that no medication or therapy seemed to fix.
It wasn't until she tried ketamine therapy that she finally felt a sense of relief.
At her worst, the Nova Scotia woman says she could barely muster up the energy to take a shower.
"You look at the shampoo bottle and think, 'It's just too far. I can't reach,'" said Topple. "So you stand there with the water running and cry and think, 'What the heck is wrong with me?'"
But after completing a clinical trial through Dalhousie University and receiving five doses of ketamine back in January, she said everything changed.
"I have a life back. I have a better life back than what I've ever had," said Topple, who now enjoys painting, gardening and writing — hobbies she wasn't capable of while she was severely depressed.
Ketamine is a fast-acting anesthetic used in medical or veterinary surgery. Selling, possessing or producing it in Canada is illegal unless it's authorized for medical or scientific purposes. In more recent years, it's become a tool used to treat severe depression that's been otherwise untreatable.
Approximately 20 patients in the province have received ketamine therapy since March 2023, according to Nova Scotia's health authority.
Psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Nunes runs the program through the mood disorders clinic at the QEII Health Sciences Centre, but can only administer the infusions on a compassionate basis due to limited resources and funding.
Nunes has witnessed first-hand how ketamine therapy has improved the lives of patients like Topple.
"It's quite remarkable how it can work, even for people who've been depressed for so long. But it helps them feel so much better that it actually provides them with hope that there is something that can be done," said Nunes.
But some might think of ketamine as a club drug that's often used and abused for its hallucinogenic effects.
"If you are buying ketamine off the street, using it in an uncontrolled fashion, or if I were to just give people vials of ketamine to take, that would of course be, yeah, a horror story," he said.
A medical examiner ruled that ketamine was the primary cause of actor Matthew Perry's death. Perry was using the drug legally through his regular doctor, but he began seeking more ketamine than his doctor would give him and buying it illegally, eventually suffering a fatal overdose in 2023.
Nunes says the drug is "very safe" when used at a low dose in a medically supervised environment.
Because the treatment is not publicly funded in Nova Scotia, Nunes and a handful of other health-care professionals volunteer their time to treat one patient every two weeks.
He said the QEII Foundation is currently raising funds to hire two nurses and some administrative staff in order to expand the program, and administer about eight treatments per day for two years as a pilot project.
He said from there, they would evaluate the data and seek more stable funding from the government.
CBC News asked the Department of Health and Wellness whether it's considering funding ketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression.
In a statement, the department responded that it regularly reviews the procedures and services covered by MSI, Nova Scotia's insurance system, but there are "no plans currently to include ketamine infusion treatment as an insured procedure or ketamine as a benefit under the Nova Scotia Pharmacare Program."
Patients like Lisa Herritt could benefit from ketamine therapy becoming part of Nova Scotia's public health system.
She was also treated by Nunes, but unlike Topple, Herritt requires infusions on a more regular basis and had to seek treatment beyond what's being offered through the QEII Foundation.
She was ultimately referred to a private clinic where she receives ketamine infusions every other week to the tune of $12,000 per year.
Although it's expensive, she says going without the treatment is not an option for her.
"I feel like I know what would happen, and I would go right back to where I was. And it is a horrible place," said Herritt, who has suffered from depression for more than 22 years since the birth of her first son.
She said prior to receiving ketamine, her depression was "insurmountable." Herritt was disengaged from her children's lives and she eventually had to leave her 20-year career as a pharmacist.
Herritt had tried many different medications to get her depression under control to no avail. She even tried electroconvulsive therapy until turning to ketamine as a last resort in 2023.
She has responded well to the drug and believes that ketamine therapy should be made more accessible to Nova Scotians suffering with the mental illness.
"If there's a treatment out there that would work after multiple failures, why wouldn't we do it for people? It's not like you wouldn't treat other illnesses that there's a treatment for," she said.
Topple agrees.
"Nova Scotians need this … and it needs to be funded. It will save so much pain, so much hurt and it will save a lot of money in unnecessary health care," she said.
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