Institute For The Future

Ruby`s Bequest in Kenya?

I’ve been reading through Ruby’s Bequest and have been struck by how useful a similar exercise could be for Kenya. When it comes to caring for the mentally ill, many Kenyan’s still live in the dark ages. To begin with, there is little to no government support. There is little to no education regarding mental illness. Kenya only has 60 psychiatrists, one for every 500,000 people. There is no education regarding the causes of mental illness, most people still think mental illness is caused by bad behavior. If a villager has a child with say, autism, they will be shunned. A mentally ill child is thought of as an embarrassment. Often times families end up locking up their disabled relative, or giving up and kicking them out of the homestead. I don’t want to draw the wrong picture of Kenyans, none of this is malicious. It is due to lack of education, government support, and extreme poverty. Even the best intentioned parents have to lock up their children during the day when they go away to fetch water or harvest their maize in order to prevent their child from wandering off and potentially getting sexually attacked, lost, or beaten. There exists a chronic problem of caring properly for mentally ill Kenyans. Although the government is only making tiny strides in the right direction, with an addition in the proposed constitution in 2007 (which did not pass) giving rights to mentally and physically disabled citizens, there is an increase in civil society organizations, like Kenya Society for the Mentally Handicapped advocating for and housing mentally ill people not properly taken care of by their families.