Women’s Minds
The Treliving Family’s Fight for Women’s Mental Health.
The devastating impact of mental illness hit home early and hard for Sandi Treliving. When her brother was a teenager, he struggled for years before he could find the proper diagnosis and treatment for schizophrenia.
“It changed our family, you know, right to the core. You spend your time consumed with ensuring that an individual is getting the care that they need,” said Sandi.
The experience instilled in her a lifelong commitment to mental health advocacy and philanthropy, which led her to becoming a director on the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Foundation’s board.
In 2020, she found a specific focus for her mission when the then-CEO of the Foundation, Deborah Gillis, shared shocking data about the gender gap in mental health research and care: that women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorders, and that they are far more prone to developing Alzheimer’s disease.
WORLDWIDE, ONLY ABOUT 3% OF NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH STUDIES EXAMINE ISSUES RELATED TO WOMEN’S BRAIN HEALTH.
“It’s not normal. It’s wrong,” said Sandi in an interview with Mind Over Matter®. She decided to do something about it.
“I spoke with my husband, Jim (owner of Boston Pizza and former member of the panel of investor ‘Dragons’ on the Dragons’ Den program). I reached out to the women in our family — daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters — with an idea: ‘Let’s be part of the change.’”
“It really hit me when Mom brought this to me,” said Sandi’s daughter Kate Borger, speaking from her home in Dallas.
It was really shocking because, maybe naively, I thought for the longest time the system’s got us covered. And then to find out that that’s actually not the case. I became infuriated and wanted to tell everybody that I know, because this impacts all of us.
The result of those family conversations was a founding gift to CAMH from the Trelivings, enabling the creation of womenmind, described as a “community of philanthropists, thought leaders and scientists dedicated to tackling gender disparities in science to put the unique needs and experiences of women at the forefront of mental health research.”
“(We have) a common goal,” said Sandi. “We are committed to awareness, advancing women in science, and propelling women-centred mental health research.”
SINCE ITS LAUNCH IN 2020, WOMENMIND HAS FUNDED MILLIONS IN RESEARCH PROJECTS, SUPPORTED POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWS, AND PROVIDED MENTORSHIP TO WOMEN RESEARCHERS.
In 2022, the initiative received a major boost with the creation of the Treliving Family Chair in Women’s Mental Health, and the appointment of Dr. Liisa Galea to the post, luring her from a longtime position at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
“It took a lot to draw me away from the mountains, but I believe in the mission of womenmind,” Dr. Galea told Mind Over Matter®.
It was her study, produced with colleagues at UBC, that found that only 3% of neuroscience and psychiatry research is devoted to women’s brain health.
“I feel like I’ve been living and breathing this. It was important for me to get involved because for me it’s a health crisis when we don’t study women, and this is one of the few institutions that do it.”
Along with the Treliving Family Chair, Dr. Galea wears several other hats. She’s the scientific lead for womenmind, a senior scientist at CAMH, lead of the Women’s Health Research Cluster (a community of more than 950 members across 38 countries committed to women’s health research), and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. She is a researcher, a mentor, and an advocate for gender equity in research, someone who has confronted the barriers first-hand and is unafraid to speak up.
(Women’s health), for whatever reason, is just not seen as important enough to study, which is astounding to me.
“I’ve been told it’s not important to study postpartum depression, even though it’s the time of greatest risk for a mental health crisis,” Dr. Galea continued. “I also study how pregnancy experiences influence risk to develop Alzheimer’s, and I was told to add males to the study, even though they can’t get pregnant. Another researcher was asked the same as someone who studies placentas. … It is ludicrous to only study women compared to men or males, we need to understand how female-specific experiences like menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause influence brain health in the short and long term. I’ve been accused of being overly focused, and I am, because girls and women deserve the research attention.”
WHILE THERE HAS BEEN SOME PROGRESS IN ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF WOMEN’S HEALTH, RESEARCH GRANTS ARE STILL BADLY LAGGING. THIS MAKES THE WOMENMIND-FUNDED PROJECTS STAND OUT.
In March 2025, the journal Nature Medicine published a landmark study led by womenmind scientist Dr. Daisy Singla, which found that talk therapy showed promise in supporting women at risk of postpartum depression. In August 2025, Dr. Galea published the results of a project that showed that menopause hormone therapies that use estradiol are more effective for memory when delivered transdermally (for example, by a patch) than via a pill.
“We couldn’t have done all this work without the (womenmind) funding. It’s really been fantastic, opening up a world of opportunity for research and mentorship,” said Dr. Galea. “I owe the Trelivings a lot. Womenmind has put women’s mental health on the map. We need more of it.”
We could not have found a better person for the Treliving Family Chair. Liisa has dedicated her career to women’s disparities in research.
Her daughter Kate added to her mom’s support for these efforts: “It’s incredible what’s been done with what we have. We have a very scrappy team, who has put out incredible amounts of work, compared to a lot of organizations that have a much bigger piggy bank to work with. I’m really proud to see the progress that’s been made.”
As womenmind continues to prosper and grow, Sandi and Jim Treliving are expanding their advocacy to the like-minded mission of Women’s Brain Health Initiative (WBHI). They are acting as Honourary Co-Chairs of the inaugural Women’s Brain Health Summit, December 1 and 2 in Toronto.
It is a high-powered event, which features leading researchers in the field, and not one but two Academy Award–winning actors, Geena Davis and Marcia Gay Harden, both of whom are eloquent advocates for women’s brain health.
“Jim loves the cause and he’s so proud to be part of it,” said Sandi.
“What Lynn Posluns and Women’s Brain Health Initiative have done is incredible. It’s deeply aligned with womenmind’s mission, and we see this summit as an opportunity to further this work.”
Source: Mind Over Matter V21