Introduction

RVICS Consultants is a multi-disciplinary, strategic consulting team providing workshop programs, mini-conferences, expertise, and planning on new community-based initiatives for those with serious mental illness. The strategic objective: to improve the quality of life of the seriously mentally ill over the long haul, that is, after their psychosis has been addressed and they are into the rest of their lives A prime point of reference is the creation of an intentional community on the Riverview Lands, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, but RVICS Consultants is available for other work as well.

The premise of our approach is to move beyond institutional arrangements for the severely mentally ill to community initiatives based on the building of relationships, breaking isolation, generating a “sense of citizenship,” and engagement in meaningful work and activities for those who can manage them.

Special areas of expertise include what it’s like to live with serious mental illness, mental illness itself, mental health services and their shortcomings, chronic post-discharge symptoms and difficulties (especially the “negative symptoms” of schizophrenia), mental-illness education, interpersonal support (family, friends, neighbours) of those with mental illness, existing housing for those with mental illness (such as “single-site and “scattered-site” housing), intentional communities with therapeutic or developmental objectives, community integration, organizational development, and inter-group trust building.

Potential clients include government ministries, municipalities, planners, housing agencies, and related agencies in B.C. with an interest in those with mental illness and in the re-development of the Riverview Lands, as well as ministries and agencies in other provinces (and counterparts in American states) with an interest in intentional communities with a therapeutic purpose.