Mission and objectives
The CDDM is a grassroots organization implemented in 1989 by concerned individuals who saw the urgent need to join forces to assert the rights of people with mental health problems.
Grounded in the principles of the People First movement, the CDDM prioritizes relationships of aid, not of authority. This means empowering people to act on their own behalf. We are favourably biased toward those we assist and our actions are informed by their expressed needs and wants.
Jurisdiction
The organization’s services cover the provincial health region of Montérégie.
Mission
The CDDM is a non-profit community organization created to support people who live with or have experienced mental health issues by promoting and ensuring the observance of their rights.
The CDDM is also:
- An alternative mental health group
- An advocacy group supporting social change
- A mobilization group that subscribes to the principles of autonomous popular education
The CDDM operates democratically, with no distinction, exclusion or preference as to race, colour, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, marital status, age (except as prescribed by law), religion, political beliefs, language, ethnic origin or nationality, social status, disability or the use of a means to alleviate the effects of a disability.
Core values and principles
Respect, equity, social justice, autonomy, solidarity, mutual aid and democracy are values that underpin the CDDM’s every action.
Our actions are guided by 10 basic principles:
- The primacy of the rule of law and the exercise of human rights
- Being favourably biased towards people who live with or have experienced mental health issues
- Welcoming and accepting people differently
- Seeing the whole person
- Acknowledging the experiences of people who live or have lived with mental health issues
- Ensuring egalitarian relations
- Fostering individual and collective empowerment
- Maintaining a critical outlook
- Staying rooted in the community
- Being socially and politically engaged
Guidelines and objectives
1-The CDDM supports and defends those who are oppressed by the psychiatric care system. We actively monitor health system practices and denounce those that infringe upon basic rights.
-We inform and support people who wish to file a complaint or exercise a right, and we help them defend themselves.
-We inform people who live with or have experienced mental health issues of the organizations and resources available to them in Montérégie.
-We continually reinforce and publicize our critique of the psychiatric system.
-We support the emergence and renewal (in both the public health and community sectors) of mental health practices that respect individual rights.
-We denounce and alert the public to the medicalization of social issues.
2-The CDDM supports and strengthens the grassroots movement that defends the rights of people who live with or have experienced mental health issues by encouraging civic engagement.
-We bring together people in Montérégie who are concerned about defending the rights of people who live with or have experienced mental health issues.
-We facilitate and develop collective action.
-We encourage individuals to be part in their own empowerment process, in keeping with their personal abilities.
-We believe that everyone can reclaim their own power.
-We use democratic, political, media, administrative and legal means to ensure that people who live with or have experienced mental health issues are represented and that their demands are heard.
-We put the principles of popular education toward strengthening collective actions.
3-We are committed to campaigning for the fundamental right to freedom of people who live with or have experienced mental health issues, as well as to fighting discriminatory policies, institutions and practices that subject them to social control.
-We promote solidarity by bolstering connections between the various components of the community.
-We join forces with groups and coalitions who share similar aims.
-We denounce and campaign against policies that keep individuals in a state of poverty and dependence.
-We also denounce and campaign against the stigmatization, discrimination and intolerance toward people who live with or have experienced mental health issues.
4-We affirm the importance of promoting and supporting community action and alternative approaches to mental health.
-We uphold the values that form the basis of the anti-psychiatry movement.
-We are rooted in the community.
-We support and get involved in community groups and organizations.