Project Lead(s): Arlene MacDougall
Issue
Mental health and substance use disorders – such as psychosis, mood disorders, anxiety and alcohol dependency – are among the most common and disabling health conditions worldwide
Seventy-five percent of people who live with mental illness in low- and middle-income countries do not receive mental health services.
This lack of access to treatment, along with social conditions such as poverty and stigma, negatively impacts community participation and can render people with serious mental illness as unemployable and marginalized.
Solution
This project, called CREATE, is a new paradigm for recovery from serious mental illness that couples social business with focused and culturally informed psychosocial rehabilitation (PSR) practices and peer support.
This 18-month demonstration project was conducted in Machakos Town, a city of approximately 150,000 people, located 60 kilometers southwest of Nairobi, Kenya.
The CREATE project set out to:
1) establish a social business that employs people with serious mental illness
2) develop and pilot an evidence-based, locally-informed PSR Toolkit to support the overall functioning of social business employees
3) evaluate factors associated with uptake of the CREATE model and the potential impacts on employees, their families and others in the community.
Outcome
CREATE established a locally-informed social business called “Point Tech Solutions”, a full-service print shop that offered employment to seven people recovering from serious mental illness (schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder).
CREATE also produced a low-cost, evidence-based PSR Toolkit that can be delivered in a group format by local community health workers and people with serious mental illness themselves, supporting the overall functioning and well-being of the social business employees.
The PSR Toolkit consists of psycho-education on the common mental and substance-use disorders, self-management, and workplace and life skills modules that promote recovery from serious mental illness.
Mental health professionals at the Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital (Nairobi) and Machakos Level 5 District Hospital (Machakos Town) in Kenya are also now trained on the CREATE PSR Toolkit, in order to build capacity in implementing evidence-based psychosocial rehabilitation care for their patients.
Data suggests that participation in CREATE was associated with people with serious mental illness experiencing a personal sense of well-being, a more positive self-identity, increased productivity and financial independence, improved employment and social skills, and greater connectedness with their families and larger community.
Family members also described a reduced sense of burden as caregivers, and expressed pride in their family member employed through the CREATE project.
An expansion study is ongoing to assess the CREATE PSR Toolkit applicability in a hospital set-up, funded by Western University’s Department of Psychiatry.
Online crowdfunding is ongoing to support the operational costs of the social business as it establishes itself and becomes self-sustaining.
The National Council for People with Disabilities in Kenya has committed support for Point Tech Solutions to diversify their current services, and increase income and employment opportunities.
Point Tech Solutions will soon acquire full legal status, in accordance with local trade regulations, thus qualifying to benefit from government business opportunities reserved for people with disabilities.