‘Being able to feel joy again:’ QEII Foundation raising funds for ketamine treatment program

A Nova Scotia woman shares her story of hope after 20 years of treatment-resistant depression.

Lisa Herritt, a wife and mother of two, has been living with treatment-resistant depression since the birth of her first child.

“It began 22 years ago,” she explains. “I’ve never been completely well up until the last year, and completely well is a strong (phrase), as well as I have been.”

Through the years, the Nova Scotia woman says she tried a number of treatment options, but she never quite felt like herself.

“I had overwhelming feelings of despair and sadness,” she adds. “I had guilt because I felt like I was disappointing myself.”

Herritt’s psychiatrist, Dr. Abraham Nunes, began treating her with ketamine therapy at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax in 2023.

“Typically, what can happen is that people’s moods can improve within 40 minutes to two hours of even their first infusion,” Nunes explains. “We give them several infusions over a couple of weeks and hopefully get them out of their depression fast.”

Herritt started to feel better.

These days, in combination with her other medication, Herritt continues to receive ketamine therapy by paying out of pocket at a private clinic.

Because of limited resources, Nunes says the Mood Disorders Clinic at the QEII can only provide ketamine treatment on a compassionate basis – but they’re working to change that.

“What we’re looking to do is raise money to hire two nurses and some clerical support, and then also just to buy some more equipment, to be able to provide treatments to up to eight people a day,” he explains.

The QEII Foundation is actively raising $370,000 to establish a permanent ketamine treatment program at the QEII Health Sciences Centre.

Nunes says it would greatly impact the lives of many Nova Scotians with treatment-resistant depression, like Herritt.

“It helps people to have that experience of being able to feel joy again,” he says. “There’s a part of depression called anhedonia, where you can’t experience any pleasure and that’s very, very difficult to treat, but ketamine seems to help with that a lot.”

Herritt says she is grateful to feel a sense of hope once again and encourages all Nova Scotians to support the QEII Foundation as they work towards their fundraising goal.

“For many, many people it’s lifechanging. I am not at all the person I was a year ago,” she says. “I remember hearing myself laugh out loud and knew it wasn’t contrived.”

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