Traditional healers to benefit from Sh887m mental health grant

People living with unidentified mental disorders roam the streets in various parts of the country. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Traditional healers in Kenya are among community workers who will benefit from Sh887 from Canada in a project aimed at addressing mental health.

The grant from the Canadian government will fund a project that aims at identifying the mentally ill in communities and helping them access treatment.

Other African countries that will benefit from the grant include Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Traditional healers in Kenya were selected to benefit after participating in a pilot project that saw them and community workers identify 500 cases of mental illness in their communities.

The project is a scale-up by Grand Challenges Canada, which is funded by the Canadian government.

Canada's Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau said in a statement that the country was keen on investing in innovative ways to improve mental health services in developing countries.

"Canada is helping to accelerate positive change and finding solutions to global development challenges," she said.

Grand Challenges Chief Executive Officer Canada Peter Singer said the mentally sick are often ignored or hidden rather than helped.

“It has been a privilege to support these groundbreaking projects since their inception, to see the convincing evidence of their positive impact, and now to help scale up the success of six bold ideas which will improve the health of tens of thousands of people," he said.

In Kenya, the funds will be used to engage and educate more than 160 community health workers and traditional and faith healers.

The project aims to increase facilities where mentally ill patients can access health services.

There are two such facilities in Makueni County, for example, and the project aims to increase the number to 20 in counties between Nairobi and Mombasa.

The project will also focus on building awareness and combating the stigma of mental illness in rural areas.