Community-Based Care
Good mental health care does not require an institutional setting to be rigorous. Our model is community-based: accessible, personal, and responsive to the people we actually serve.
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About usThe team behind Breakthrough Therapies.
A small group of clinicians who own the practice, provide the care, and train everyone who joins them.
The practice
A house, not an institution.
Breakthrough Therapies is owned and led by the clinicians who provide the care. Treatment happens in a private house in the north of Toronto rather than an institutional setting, because a community-based model can hold the same clinical standard while being far easier to actually reach.
Every clinician here was personally trained and mentored rather than simply hired, so the consistency of your care does not rest on any one person. Dr. Dawn DeCunha founded the practice in 2020, on the evidence-based clinical foundation she had already spent decades building.
What we hold to
Our values.
Clinician-Led
Breakthrough Therapies is owned and led by the clinicians who provide care. That means every decision is driven by what is right for our patients, first and always.
Mentorship at Our Core
Every clinician on our team is personally trained and mentored, not simply hired. We are building something meant to last. We have been providing this care since 2018, a genuine long-term commitment to this field.
Evidence, Always
We hold ourselves to the same evidentiary standard as any other area of clinical medicine: outcome measurement, peer review, and honest reporting of what we find.
Accessibility
We work to remove barriers to care, including flexible payment approaches and our Safe at Home program for patients who cannot easily travel to us.
Our team
The people who will look after you.
Founder and Clinical Director
Dr. Dawn DeCunha, Ed.D., C.Psych.
Clinical and Educational Psychologist
A clinical and educational psychologist with more than three decades of practice, registered to work across the full lifespan. She founded Psychology Works in 1992 and continues to lead it, and founded Breakthrough Therapies in 2020 to bring medicine-assisted psychotherapy to patients for whom standard treatment has fallen short.
She teaches and mentors at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and holds registration with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario.
Medical Team
Photography pending
Mareena Mathew, NP
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner
Over 20 years of experience at CAMH, bringing deep knowledge of severe mental health conditions and medication management.
Photography pending
Dr. Karan, MD
Physician
Bio pending
Therapists
Photography pending
Terra Dafoe
Clinical Psychologist
20+ years of experience working with complex mental illness, with a trauma-focused lens.
Photography pending
Jill Schroeder
Psychologist
A diverse background working with youth and first responders managing chronic mental illness.
Monica Lau
Registered Psychotherapist
Extensive experience with medicine-assisted work, bringing a somatic component to her practice.
Photography pending
Tara Jane Wodelet
Registered Psychotherapist
A former midwife with 20+ years of experience, with a particular interest in the LGBTQ+ community.
Administration
Photo pending
Nehlie Asaba
Administration
Bio pending
We use real photographs of our own team only. Where a portrait is still to be taken, we have left the space open rather than substitute a stock image.
Want to know who you would be working with?
The first conversation is free, and it is with a clinician.