Mutiso, Victoria

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 (Whiteford et al., 2013). In low-resource settings such as Kenya, this essentially renders people with serious mental illness (PWSMI) unemployable and relegated to the social margins. Challenged by the funders of our project to find bold solutions to global health issues, our response was CREATE, a new paradigm for recovery that couples social business (SB) with focused and culturally informed psychosocial rehabilitation (PSR) practices and peer supports. This 18-month project is being conducted in Machakos, a city of approximately 150,000 people 60 kilometres southwest of Nairobi, Kenya. This article begins with a brief overview of the key components of the initiative then focuses particularly on the evolution and implementation of a PSR toolkit. We conclude with reflections on the process and some lessons learned. (From publisher)

This report describes the iterative development and implementation of a recovery-oriented psychosocial rehabilitation Toolkit as part of a larger project designed to support the community-based rehabilitation and recovery of people with serious mental illness living in low resource settings. This joint Canadian-Kenyan community based psychosocial project (see www.createkenya.com) comprises a work integration social enterprise model paired with a low-cost locally developed psychosocial rehabilitation Toolkit in Machakos, Kenya. Early results demonstrate the value of the Toolkit for the local community to advance skills, develop resources and ultimately support social inclusion.