Melissa & Joshua's Story

By the time Joshua and Melissa met in a homeless shelter, everyone in their lives had pretty much given up on them. Truth be told, they had pretty much given up on themselves.

“Our families really got fed up, thinking we are never going to change,” says Melissa. “I felt a lot of shame over what I was doing.”

The good news is that Joshua and Melissa became a couple in that shelter, a love that sustains them to this day.

So they started stealing. At first it was stealing from stores and cars to take whatever of value they could find. By the end of their crime spree, they were taking the whole car.

Then they got caught. They were always going to get caught.

That was the moment when their lives could have gone either way.

They were offered an opportunity to participate in what is known as the Drug Treatment Court (DTC), a multi-faceted partnership between CAMH and the justice system which brings together a team of judges, federal and provincial crowns, duty counsel and probation services that offers supervised drug treatment as an alternative to prison for people whose criminal conduct was motivated by drug addiction.

“A woman from the DTC said we can bring you in for treatment today and get you help,” Joshua recalls. “I was like, ‘I’m fine, I don’t need no help. But then I’m looking around and I’m in a jail cell and I’m like “Hold on a second.”

They both went into the program and started working with clinicians and peer support workers at CAMH.

That was supposed to be the happily ever after part. But over the next three years, they practically dared CAMH to kick them out of the program and send them back to jail. Relapses, missed appointments. Deeply seated fears that they were just a lost cause that CAMH was wasting its effort on.

But Melissa and Joshua were not left behind. They credit one of CAMH’s Peer Support Workers, Paulette Walker, who also has lived experience of mental illness and addiction, with helping them believe in themselves again.

“She says ‘I know what it’s like to be there’,” remembers Joshua. “That was one of the greatest feelings, being with somebody who experienced what I was experiencing. It’s so different than talking to people who learned everything from books and have no idea what we have been through. She said she had been there, lived that raw life. It made it so much easier to open up and be honest. That’s all she asked of us.”

Today, Melissa and Joshua have both been in remission for five years. They have had two children together. Wedding plans are being made.

“CAMH didn't give up on us,” says Melissa. “They probably could have, or maybe should have, but they never did. They supported us both through some of the most challenging times in our lives. They saved us. Today, I feel like they are a part of my family. The invitations are going out, and they are coming to our wedding.”