African Woman and Child Feature Service

With an increase in the number of families and communities declining to live with the mentally ill patients upon their release from the hospital, psychiatrists and advocates of these mentally ill persons in Kenya are now pushing for the establishment of what they call Halfway Houses.

Mathare hospital is taking the lead in this campaign, asking well wishers to come forward to help create these houses as first step to easing the burden on the facility and help the ex-patients integrate back into the society with few difficulties.

From the hospital the ex-patient is placed in the halfway house for sometime before being released to their families. These houses are used to accommodate these ex-patients as one of the processes of full recovery and re-integration into their families and the society in a more humane and democratic manner.  

These houses also provide an opportunity to link the patient with his family and community through a comprehensive and cooperative approach which promotes the family interest in the patient.

If used in Kenya, such an approach will help avoid rejection and relapse to mental illness which usually happens when a person is released directly from the psychiatric hospital into their families or society.

Research in developed countries where the concept is well established shows that if the ex-patient is allowed to return to their families or live alone immediately after leaving the hospital, the chances of them ending-up in stressful situation and going back to the hospital or on the streets are very high.

This is the reality in Kenya where some patients who have been released from Mathari Hospital directly to their families are herded back to the facility just a few months after being with their families. Nurses at the hospital say non-supportive and stressful family environment makes these ex-patients to lapse back into their earlier condition. They too support the idea of the halfway houses.

While a resident in this halfway house, these ex-patients are given therapy and emotional support in an environment that allows them to interact with their families and other people in the society. This process gives the person’s family an opportunity to be counseled on how to handle him or her and to study if indeed he or she has reformed and become more responsible to live in harmony with other people.

Residents of this house are offered guidance, and required to remain sober and comply with a given recovery programme. Likewise, during their stay at this house, the ex-patients are offered job opportunities, allowed to hunt for jobs or engage in any other income generating activities or even pursue secondary or college education. As they go about this, they are monitored by a social worker and an occupational therapist to gauge if they can work and fend for themselves.

According to Dr Nelly Kitazi, the Mathari Hospital boss who is pushing for creation of such houses in Kenya, ex-patients in these homes will be offered emotional and therapeutic support as they transit to normal life within their families and communities.

“The hospital sees this intervention as the best option to ease pressure on the facility and reduce the many rejections of these ex-patients by their families and their community,” says Dr Kitazi.

She is now appealing to well-wishers and companies to come-up and support the actualization of this idea in the country.

Besides people released from a psychiatrist hospital, in developed countries, halfway houses are also used as transformation centres meant solely for persons who have bee released from prisons or jail. Those who go through these houses emerge better persons than those who leave the hospital back into their families.