Every week, 400 Montrealers like Yasmeen Alavi visit the Douglas Institute's Wellington Centre. There, they participate in a variety of arts and crafts designed to provide psycho-social rehabilitation to those with mental illness.
"It's soothing for me. It's like a therapy. It's also meeting people, talking to people - normal things. It's nice," said Alavi.
After a decade at the centre in Verdun, the program is expanding and opening to additional clientele by forming a partnership with Les Impatients, a private community organization that specializes in art therapy to help the mentally ill. The group takes its name from the resilient impatiens flowers that bloom in the shade.
Under the new partnership, the centre has also mandated Les Impatients to spruce up its public boutique, to improve the range and quality of the products available for the public to buy. The two groups will share the profits, though the goal is really to de-stigmatize mental illness, so people visit the boutique like they would any other.
"We're trying to bring community organizations of all kinds into the centre. This is the first one and for the time being the most important because it's also going to change the way the centre looks. But the principle is to make the centre a crossroads," said Barry Crago, Wellington Centre administrator.
The partnership with the Wellington Centre gives Les Impatients a fifth workshop - the first in Montreal's west end - and in return, opens up the variety of arts and crafts available to people at the institute.
"It's really a win-win situation," said Lorraine Palardy, founder of Les Impatients.
It's a form of therapy well-suited to those in a recovery phase of mental illness, said Palardy.
"The important thing for Les Impatients, and I think here too, is for everyone to have pleasure when they do something. I think the pleasure to do art is the first thing," she said.
Lilianne Hamel, a patient at the Wellington Centre, agrees.
"It's always art - dancing and drawing. It's my life," she said.
