2.2 - Vanessa Bortolin

Robert Lewandowski

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TW: Suicide Vanessa Bortolin is a retired accountant, mother to a teenage daughter and widow to her beautiful husband of 30 years, Franco, who she lost two years ago to suicide after his 3-year battle with treatment-resistant clinical depression. Vanessa had the foresight to begin documenting, via an excel spreadsheet, medication dosage increments and their side effects (total 19 different antidepressant/anti-psychotic drugs), treatments administered (total 96 ECT’s and 24 TMS’s), the 9 hospitalisations (4 involuntarily sectioned under mental health due to suicide risk), and the various professors of psychiatry seen, including the Black Dog institute. Vanessa hoped to access psychedelic therapies for Franco. This was his last hope. Dr Deb Roberts, PhD is the Mind Medicine Australia Podcast host for Season 2 and has been a MMA volunteer, guides the weekly staff meditation, on the MMA <a href="https://mindmedicineaustralia.org.au/lived-experience-panel/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lived Experience Panel</a> and has a life-long relationship with mental (ill) health yet been able to navigate a fulfilling existence through various means. She is deeply passionate about conversations related to wellbeing. She uses her own lived experience as well as the reality of having two family members who ended their life seeing no treatment pathway forward. One was her older sister who tried countless medicine combinations, therapies and facilities over 30 years. -- Mind Medicine Australia exists to help alleviate the suffering and suicides caused by mental illness in Australia through expanding the treatment options available to medical practitioners and their patients. We will establish safe and effective psychedelic-assisted treatments to treat a range of mental illnesses. In furtherance of this mission, The Mind Medicine Australia Podcast ‘Season 2’ aims to connect, listen&n

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