The Centre for Child Development, Mental Health, and Policy (CCDMP) is an extra-departmental unit (EDU:C) at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). It is a multi-disciplinary centre advancing cutting-edge research in the area of child development and mental health.
Our Vision
The CCDMP's vision is to foster every child’s healthy development and potential for kindness, both locally and globally.
To achieve this vision, we:
- Conduct research that advances a holistic understanding of children and generates services and practice solutions to enhance their potential and healthy development.
- Unite child development and child mental health specialists from diverse backgrounds in an environment that inspires innovations in research, practice, and policy.
- Inform policy to promote the mental health and potential of all children
Our Strategy
Our work spans research, practice, and policy, with the aim of understanding and promoting mental health and potential for kindness and flourishing in all children. We focus on the interconnected capacities of mental health and kindness because mental health helps children grow into stronger individuals, while kindness supports children in treating themselves and others with compassion and care, thereby contributing to a stronger society. To concentrate and enhance our impact, we focus on early childhood and adolescence as these periods involve substantial growth and change that set the stage for later development and adjustment.
Our History
The CCDMP was formed in 2019 out of Founding Director Tina Malti’s Laboratory for Social-Emotional Development and Intervention (SEDI Lab). The SEDI Lab is a research-focused laboratory in the Department of Psychology at UTM that was established in 2010. The objectives of the SEDI Lab are to understand the roots, pathways, and consequences of kindness and aggression in children, with an emphasis on the role of environmental adversity in harmful and benevolent orientations. The SEDI Lab now serves as part of the research arm of the CCDMP in order to extend our reach and to support the application of our research on social-emotional development and adversity into meaningful practice and policy initiatives for children in need.
Our People
