Employment – Main Method for Psycho-Social Rehabilitation

Salome Achba

28-year-old Dato is my friend; he is a project coordinator at an international organization. Several years ago he got depressed as a result of serious heart-trauma. Since then, he has been taking large amount of psychotropic medicines every day and visits a psychiatrist once per month. The employer does not know anything about his problems. As Dato said, if the employer learns that he has psychic problems, he might lose a job.

Like Dato, about 100 000 people have psychic problems in Georgia. According to the survey of the last years, 90% of them are unemployed. Majority of employed people do not inform their employers about their problems.

Psychologist Jana Javakhishvili said main reason of this problem is low public consciousness. “Generally, public health is proportional to how prisoners and people with psychic problems are treated in the society. Unfortunately, we lack progress in both fields. General public consciousness, in this particular case of the employer, about people with psychic problems is very low,” said Jana Javakhishvili and added that very few of these people need hospital treatment. 95% of them need to stay in hospital only two-three months per year; rest of the time they can take active part in public life.

Specialists say that employment is the most important method for psycho-social rehabilitation of people with psychic problems. However, employment statistics of these people shows that this method is not largely applied in Georgia. “In our country, people mix up art-therapy with psycho-social rehabilitation and it is not correct. Psycho-social rehabilitation means to assist person to integrate into society. And employment is the best solution of this problem. Job does not only give financial income to a person but it creates a social circle for his/her integration. A person feels himself/herself plenipotentiary member of the society when he/she is employed,” Jana Javakhishvili said.

Nowadays, there is no special state employment program or strategy which could assist people with psychic problems to get employed. In the west, people of this category work in social enterprises and cooperatives. The State grants some advantages to similar enterprises over other business-companies: for example, they are free from taxes. The income from social enterprise is spent on its development.

“For example, mostly people with psychic problems work in one of Italian enterprises, whose model we would like to inculcate in Georgia. However, people without health problem also work in the same enterprise. The enterprise produces various products. When a state announces some bid competition, the law gives advantage to the enterprise, where people with psychic problems work. So, employer also has motivation to employ as many people with psychic problem as possible,” said Jana Javakhishvili.

Several social enterprises work in Georgia too; however all of them were established on the base of nongovernmental organization and no advantages work for them. For example, they pay taxes like other companies. There is no legislative base in our country, which could give some advantages to them.

Specialists said the main problem in this field still is lack of general program and strategy for the employment of the people with psychic problems in the state.

It is interesting that psychic health was mentioned only in one passage in the pre-election program of the new government: “funding of psychic health program from the state budget will be doubled,” the Georgian Dream’s program reads.

What are the approaches of the new government to this field? Do they plan to work out and implement any strategy? We interviewed representative of the parliamentary majority from the Healthcare Committee Pati Khalvashi. She does not know whether their committee plans to discuss this issue. “We have not discussed the issue yet. I do not know views of the parliamentary majority with regard to this problem yet,” said Khalvashi.