PIM provides mental health education programs to teachers, healthcare providers and community members in resource poor settings. These programs are designed to increase the knowledge and capacity for those supporting, treating and living with individuals suffering from mental illness. These programs also generate a significant amount of research which is used to not only improve PIM's programming, but also to help improve policies, programming and education on mental health.
Our main mission is to increase awareness, promote wellness and develop capacity to support individuals with mental illnesses in resource poor communities.
PIM's most recent work has been in Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. Partnered with Walking Palms Global Initiative, our teams have been training medical workers, prison guards, teachers and NGO staff to better understand, support and assist people with mental health concerns in their community. Due to recent natural disasters, this area has limited health care access, and many communities are left to rely on mobile medical brigades to provide them with their basic medical needs. PIM was asked by a local NGO to provide our training programs to increase the capacity of these medical workers and others.
PIM is also working hard in Canada to develop support groups for individuals suffering from persistent positive psychotic symptoms. The individuals that these groups would service are often unsupported in our communities because they are ‘not sick enough’ to be involved in intensive case management and they are not in their first episode.
