background There is a lower employment rate among persons with severe mental illness.
aim In order to increase the employment rate among mentally ill patients, azertie, a centre for vocational rehabilitation, has integrated a combination of psychomotor and mental training (the I Care concept) into its vocational rehabilitation programme. We investigated the results of the azertie system via a pilot study
method Over a period of 10 week period of guided training for work, persons with severe mental illness receive three sessions per week of mental training and psychomotor training.
results 149 clients participated in the study. Of these, 70 clients (47%) found employment within the year. 50 participants were still receiving training; of these, 10 (6.7%) were likely to find employment. At a follow-up after at least one year of employment 90% of the clients was still at work.
conclusion The results of this pilot study should be interpreted with some caution because we did not use a control group. Nevertheless, when we compare the total employment rate (53.7%) with the employment rate in the period before the start-up of the I Care programme (10%) we can conclude that our programme led to a five-fold increase in the percentage of persons in this vulnerable group.