The MindSpa Podcast
The MindSpa Podcast is your go-to space for meaningful conversations around mental health, healing, and personal growth. Hosted by Michelle Massunken RSW and Tina Wilston RP, co-founders of MindSpa Mental Health Centre, each episode explores key mental health topics through expert interviews and thoughtful roundtable discussions.
From managing stress and building stronger relationships to navigating invisible challenges, the MindSpa Podcast offers grounded, professional insights in a warm and accessible way. Tune in weekly for supportive, real-world conversations to help you feel seen, supported, and empowered on your wellness journey.
The MindSpa Podcast
Ep 16 Breaking Ground: Dr. Taplin's Mission to Make TMS Accessible in Ottawa
Discovering hope beyond traditional mental health treatments is a journey many Ottawans with depression have longed for. Dr. Chris Taplin brings that hope through Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a groundbreaking therapy now available at TMS Life Ottawa.
As Dr. Taplin reveals in our conversation, his path to TMS began with frustration. Working with university students and military personnel, he repeatedly witnessed the limitations of conventional treatments. "When people weren't responding to our first and second line treatments—medication treatments and high-quality therapy—we were actually pretty limited in Ottawa on what to do with them," he shares. This reality pushed him to seek solutions, eventually discovering that TMS is recognized in treatment guidelines as a first-line option for depression after just one failed medication attempt.
The contrast between TMS availability in different regions is striking. "In the United States, there's thousands of TMS clinics. It's like Tim Hortons here," Dr. Taplin explains. "There's cities that have a TMS one on every corner." Yet in Ontario, most patients must pay privately, with exceptions for military veterans, motor vehicle accident victims, and certain WSIB cases. Only Saskatchewan and Manitoba currently cover TMS under public healthcare, creating a significant access barrier despite overwhelming evidence supporting its effectiveness.
What makes Dr. Taplin's approach unique is his holistic view of depression treatment. Rather than offering TMS in isolation, he emphasizes understanding each patient's unique pathway to their symptoms. "The way that I approach treatment is first really learning about that person, learning about their pathway to their symptoms," he explains. This comprehensive approach addresses not only current symptoms but also works to prevent future relapses—a crucial difference from clinics that offer TMS without this therapeutic foundation. With a success rate of two out of three patients improving significantly, TMS offers new hope for those who haven't responded to traditional treatments.
Ready to explore whether TMS might work for you or someone you care about? Learn more about this innovative therapy and how it could transform your mental health journey. Share this episode with someone who might benefit from knowing there are effective alternatives when conventional treatments fall short.
Welcome to the Mindspa podcast. I'm Tina Wilson.
Speaker 2:And I'm Michelle Masunken. We are co-owners of the Mindspa Mental Health Center here in Ottawa.
Speaker 1:Today we're joined by Dr Chris Taplin from TMS Life Ottawa. Dr Taplin is passionate about helping people find new ways to manage their mental health, especially when traditional treatments haven't worked. At TMS Life, he focuses on a therapy called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS for short. It's non-invasive, drug-free treatment that's been changing lives for people living with depression and other mental health conditions. What really comes through in his work is not only his expertise, but also his genuine care for making mental health support more accessible here in Ottawa.
Speaker 3:Welcome, chris, great Thank you for having me Welcome, Chris Great.
Speaker 2:Yay, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. We're so excited to get into this conversation. We've heard lots about TMS. We know that it's relatively new to the city of Ottawa, even though it's been around for quite some time, and so we're excited to hear more about it, and so maybe you can start by telling our listeners a little bit about your journey to mental health and what inspired you and motivated you to open up TMS Life here in Ottawa.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Happy to do so. I won't start at the very beginning of my journey back in 1985 when I was born, but I think I'll move forward a few years.
Speaker 3:That's fair. So I'm a psychiatrist, which means that I went to medical school at UBC for four years and then I did my psychiatry residency at the University of Ottawa. After the completion of my residency, I was trying to figure out, you know, what is my career path. You know how best can I support people with mental health concerns and where do I do that? How do I do that? People with mental health concerns, and where do I do that? How do I do that?
Speaker 3:And you know, initially I worked at Carleton University and I worked for the military, serving active serving members, and what I found in both of those positions was that so often the people that I was seeing, especially with depression, anxiety, ptsd is that those treatments that I'd learned so much about and used during residency, you know, actually were not quite as effective as I hoped they would be, and that when people weren't responding to our first and second line treatments medication treatments and high quality therapy that we were actually pretty limited in Ottawa on what to do with them. And so a lot of times, you know, I'd be checking in with people every couple of weeks or monthly and we weren't really making significant progress, and so that really drove me to go okay, well, what are we doing here? What are our treatment options Like? Is there something else that we can do? Is there something else that I can do for our patients? And that took me down a TMS journey, essentially. So one of my friends had said to me one day you know, I'm thinking about starting a TMS clinic. And I said, okay, I've heard about TMS, but in Ottawa we didn't have any TMS clinic, so actually it wasn't a part of my residency and we weren't providing the treatment outside of research.
Speaker 3:So I started to look into TMS more and I was reminded you know that in our treatment guidelines that I studied for our exam that TMS is a first line treatment for depression if someone has not responded to one medication. And that started to make me think okay, it's a first line treatment, but we're not offering it to people here. What's going on there? You know what are they doing in other places. So I started to look into the research more and and I started to see all the studies that have come out in the last 10 years that have supported it as a first-line treatment option and that just kept coming back to that question about why aren't we providing that treatment here for people Like, why aren't we doing that in Ottawa? And that journey took me to CAMH to do extra training in TMS. And that journey took me to the United States as well to have learning from other clinics there. And I learned that in other countries, especially in the United States, there's thousands of TMS clinics. It's like Tim Hortons here.
Speaker 1:Literally. There's cities that have a TMS one on every corner.
Speaker 3:You're in one TMS clinic. You can look across the road and there's another one and it's covered by 99% of the insurance companies there. So the argument has been made for its effectiveness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about here on that note, on the insurance note?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So in Canada we're a public health care system, which I think has its amazing benefits and it also has its drawbacks which I think has its amazing benefits and it also has its drawbacks. So in Saskatchewan, for example, tms is covered under the public health care plan.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:And also in Manitoba. So individuals with depression can access the treatment without any cost to them, which I think everybody agrees is really the way that it should be For sure. But in Ottawa, right now, uh, although we've been lobbying the government, uh, to cover the treatment for all those reasons that I've given and there's a laundry list uh much longer um about its effectiveness Uh, they haven't covered the treatment in a meaningful way yet. Um, so right now in Ontario, the only way for people to access the treatment without cost is through research studies.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and really it's not appropriate for people to have to do research to access a treatment that's effective and safe. Okay, so right now, most people who are accessing the treatment in Ontario have to pay privately. Okay, and there are groups who are accessing the treatment in Ontario have to pay privately, okay. And there are groups there's definitely groups who have seen the way, seen the benefit, who cover the treatment.
Speaker 3:So military veterans, individuals after a motor vehicle accident can often get coverage and then through WSIB, individuals who are off work, work-related injuries and then develop a depression or other mental health symptoms can often get coverage. Okay, but you still sometimes have to fight for people, yeah, and there's just there's just a general lack of awareness of the treatment.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, absolutely I. One of the questions I have is is for those who haven't met you yet what is your approach with clients? How? How do you approach the client work?
Speaker 3:And why I got into mental health, why I got into psychiatry, is because it's never boring. You know everybody comes from such a diverse background and even though many of the patients that I see are struggling with depression, you know the pathway to depression is so important and it's so different for every person, you know. So the way that I approach treatment is first, you know, really learning about that person, learning about their pathway to their symptoms, and then looking at. You know what are our first goals. You know, getting out of that depression and then what are our secondary goals and how to treat those symptoms that led to depression in the first place, so that we don't end up in a depression again.
Speaker 1:So it sounds very individualized and very client-centered, not very one size fits all.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, Absolutely, and I don't think that. I know there's other TMS clinics where people just come in the clinic and they have TMS and then they leave the clinic. But I think that really misses that second part that's so important to keeping people well. Which is why that someone ended up in a depression in the first place and I think that's why other clinics have high relapse rates is because if you treat the depression, which TMS is really good at doing, and then you forget about the factors that led into a depression and you don't try and do that better the second time around or the third time around or fourth time around, then that person is much more likely to have a relapse. So there's more multiple steps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so what would that look like in terms of a depressed client comes in and they want to access TMS treatment? So there's the before the treatment actually starts and then I'm assuming there's work afterwards maintenance wise. But can you walk us through what a typical TMS treatment would look like for a depressed client?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, from when someone reaches out to the clinic or their first session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what can they expect?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So what we've tried to do is to decrease barriers to access right. So we don't require a referral from a family doctor, because we know that a huge number of people in Ontario don't have access to family doctors, so we don't require that. Someone hears about the treatment TMS or they read about it. You know, often they'll search on Google or one of their healthcare providers will recommend it to them and then they'll reach out to our clinic, no-transcript them a pretty good idea about. You know whether the treatment would be helpful for them.
Speaker 3:I always give a balanced approach. You know that in mental health we don't have 100% of the answers right, and that's why, with any treatment whether it's therapy medications, tms why, with any treatment whether it's therapy medications, tms, electroconvulsive therapy nobody can say you know 100%, this treatment is going to be the one for you. But we have to use our best judgment and give our patients the best chance of recovery and often in a treatment resistant depression, when someone has tried medications and therapy, they're not getting better. At least, what we see in our clinic is that two out of three people do get better, which is much better than medications or a different type of therapy. So part of those information sessions is to give people a reasonable expectation, based on their clinical picture, about how likely is the treatment going to be helpful or not.
Speaker 3:You know, we discuss the scheduling, the timing, the risks, the benefits, just so they can make a fully informed decision about the treatment If they choose to go forward. So they're okay with the financial commitment, if needed, and the time commitment to the treatment. Then we walk them through the next steps. So we'll do a more in-depth medical intake just to make sure that we're providing the treatment safely, because I think at the core of any treatment is to do it safely and effectively. And then we start to individualize the treatment right away for each person. So we do something called brain mapping or a quantitative which we have an image of.
Speaker 3:We have some lovely images here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And essentially every measurement we do of brain activity is indirect, you know, unless we have a neurosurgeon, open up your skull and implant electrodes. But what I found with the QEG and using that to help guide our protocols is that it tends to line up very well with clinical symptoms of the person.
Speaker 1:So that wraps up today's episode of the MindSpa podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and please remember to reach out to us at media at the MindSpaca. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thanks, take care.
