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Our Background The Ontario Ministry of Health answered calls for more consumer survivor participation in mental health policy by encouraging them to set up "patient councils". This happened during the day of "mental health reform" which started with the Graham report of 1989, and led up to the Advocacy Commission, which was formed (and defunded by the Tories) in 1995. The Advocacy Act (another hard-won battle by disability groups) was also repealed that year. But in 1990, ministerial documents like "The Road to Reform" promised survivors the system would be changed, and in 1991, both the Kingston and Queen Street provincial psychiatric hospitals started patient council steering committees. The process was at first guided by mental health professionals, but consumer survivors soon reclaimed it, and the new Queen Street Patients Council was born in 1992 with one full-time equivalent staff. The Council's first Annual General Conference in January 1993 opened the doors to establishing a list of demands. Foremost on the agenda was addressing abuse and deaths at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre and the call for survivor participation in investigations of abuse allegations. That year, the Council published a piece in the Toronto Star alerting people to the rights violations going on at Queen Street. The Health Ministry was not very happy with the Queen Street Patients Council when at the 1994 AGM, their membership voted to provide peer advocacy for Queen Street patients. Further, Queen Street administration stalled on providing funds for the Council's 1995 incorporation. Both roadblocks were cleared and we are now a non-profit corporation with a mandate to do individual and systemic advocacy. We have supported numerous survivor-run agencies and businesses, made several submissions to Ontario governments, and struggled to keep afloat over the last five years. The present "empowerment" transition will eventually redirect our funding into a new CAMH-wide client council, with sub-bodies. We are prepared to keep fighting institutional abuses and rights abuses at the "Queen Street" site. We also target legislation changes that affect psychiatric survivors here and elsewhere. In 1997, things changed. The Queen Street facility's governance was switched from governmental administration (Ministry of Health Schedule 1 facility) to a public corporation and Board of Governors. The Council now gets its funding from the "Centre for Addictions and Mental Health" (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada. This new amalgamated centre consists of Queen Street, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, and two addictions services, the Addictions Research Foundation and the Donwoods. Home
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