Crosbie completed his MA in Psychology at Lakehead University, prior to completing Medical School at McMaster in 1991. Following medical school, Dr. Watler completed his residency in psychiatry at Dalhousie University. Crosbie relocated to Duncan BC in 2001, working with Island Health in diverse clinical roles, and served as Medical Director and Department Head for Psychiatry between 2015 and 2019.
Crosbie is the lead psychiatrist for the Roots to Thrive ketamine-assisted group psychotherapy programme, also supporting their psilocybin-assisted group therapy programme. He is an instructor with VIU’s newly launched Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Graduate Certificate Programme and provides psychiatry support to Cedars at Cobble Hill residential treatment centre.
Trained in the traditional medical model, Crosbie became increasingly frustrated by the rise of “biological” psychiatry, and the limited efficacy of our standard treatments. Crosbie’s passion is bringing awareness to the upstream determinants of mental health. Through this lens, most with anxiety/depressive symptoms are not broken or disordered. Rather, they are distressed as a predictable adaptation to the trauma and disconnection of living in the modern world.
Instead of invoking “treatment resistance”, perhaps we are simply using the wrong tools. People make sense, and they deserve better.
The in-person gatherings of the Roots to Thrive program take place of the ancestral and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation at the Snuneymuxw Community Wellness Center, and also on the homelands of the Coast Salish, Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw and Nuučaan̓ułʔatḥ (Nuu-chah-nulth) Peoples.
Integral to Roots to Thrive’s approach to healing, re-connection and remembering who we are, are these Guiding Principles. By embodying these principles we intend to honour and give thanks to the Snuneymuxw and all First Nations, the teachings they carry and lands they steward, and to join in working for Truth and Reconciliation.