A Toronto Lawyer Donated $10 Million to the OCD Centre That Saved His Life
Brian Reeve was 62 when his obsessive-compulsive disorder became unmanageable. The Toronto lawyer and private equity investor had been diagnosed in the 1990s, but by 2019 the rituals had "expanded almost exponentially," leaving him unable to function in daily life.
Four Months That Changed Everything
Reeve checked into the Frederick W. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital — Canada's first and only facility dedicated exclusively to the research, education, and treatment of OCD. Over four months of intensive exposure and response prevention therapy, he learned to confront his triggers and resist compulsions. His OCD has been in remission for seven years.
He calls it a "life reset." Last week, he put a dollar figure on what that reset was worth to him: $10 million.
What the Money Will Build
The donation will fund the relocation and expansion of the treatment unit from its current community setting to a permanent home on Sunnybrook's Bayview campus. The new facility — to be renamed the Reeve OCD Centre — will include a kitchen, sleeping facilities, dedicated treatment rooms, and multipurpose spaces for group therapy, exercise, and social programming.
The gift will also establish Reeve OCD Fellowships to train the next generation of clinicians and researchers, along with an endowed OCD Chair position.
A National Gap
Roughly one in 50 Canadians will experience OCD at some point in their lives. Yet until this expansion, the Thompson Centre operated as the only dedicated facility of its kind in the country — running at capacity in a modest setting that limited how many patients it could treat.
The new centre's integration with Sunnybrook's Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program means patients will benefit from closer collaboration between clinical care and neuroscience research. For the thousands of Canadians waiting for specialized OCD treatment, this expansion can't come soon enough.
