When Marie Deschamps needed mental health support last spring, she feared joining hundreds of Montrealers stuck in an endless waiting game. “I was prepared to wait months, maybe longer,” the 34-year-old teacher told me during our conversation at a Plateau café. “Everyone knows someone who’s been on a waitlist forever.”
What Marie discovered instead represents one of Montreal’s most promising healthcare success stories in recent years.
The mental health team at the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal has accomplished what many thought impossible – reducing their waitlist from 622 patients to just 56 in less than a year. This remarkable transformation has caught the attention of healthcare providers across Quebec and beyond.
“We completely rethought how we connect people with the right services,” explains Dr. Olivier Farmer, the psychiatrist who led this initiative. “The old system wasn’t working for anyone – not for patients, not for providers.”
The team implemented several key changes to achieve these results. First, they adopted a “stepped care” approach, ensuring patients receive the appropriate level of service based on their specific needs. This prevented the common scenario where someone with moderate anxiety might wait behind someone requiring complex care.
Second, they embraced technology, introducing virtual appointments and text-message check-ins that allowed clinicians to serve more patients efficiently. For some Montrealers, this digital option removed transportation barriers that had previously made consistent care impossible.
Perhaps most importantly, they dramatically expanded group therapy options. “Many people benefit tremendously from sharing experiences with others facing similar challenges,” notes Catherine Tremblay, a psychologist with the CIUSSS. “It’s not just about efficiency – the group dynamic often creates a supportive community that individual therapy can’t provide.”
The numbers tell a compelling story. The average wait time has dropped from 13 months to just 6 weeks. For urgent cases, patients now typically receive care within 72 hours.
Mental health advocate Jean-Pierre Bernard, who has spent decades pushing for improved services in Montreal, calls this “the most significant improvement I’ve witnessed in 25 years.” During our conversation at his community center in Verdun, Bernard emphasized that “this proves what’s possible when we rethink outdated systems instead of just demanding more resources.”
The timing couldn’t be more critical. A recent Université de Montréal study found that nearly 30% of Montrealers reported significant psychological distress in 2022, up from 23% pre-pandemic. The demand for mental health services has never been higher.
While the achievements are impressive, challenges remain. The CIUSSS team acknowledges that maintaining these improvements requires ongoing effort and creativity. Some patients still face language barriers, and certain specialized services continue to have longer waitlists.
“We’re not saying we’ve solved everything,” Dr. Farmer admits. “But we’ve proven that dramatic improvement is possible.”
For Marie Deschamps, the impact has been life-changing. After completing an 8-week anxiety management program, she describes feeling “like myself again for the first time in years.”
As someone who has covered Montreal’s healthcare system for over a decade, I’ve reported on countless initiatives that promised transformation but delivered minimal change. This feels different. Walking through the mental health clinic last week, I sensed genuine optimism among staff and patients alike.
If this model can be expanded across our island and throughout Quebec, it could represent a turning point in how we address mental health needs. At a time when good news can seem scarce, this Montreal success story offers hope that meaningful change is possible – even in our most complex systems.
