Whilst Kitbag is not designed as a treatment in the traditional sense, it can enhance treatment and facilitate a speedy recovery from illness as documented by some of our Kitbag users.

For example, one person used Kitbag following an operation.  He said:

“Kitbag helped me concentrate and focus on getting better.  Daily aims/goals helped me to recognise/remember that there had been improvement in my health.  I also feel that it helped me to cope with the pain I experienced both pre and post-operatively.”

He added that Kitbag was: “a good tool/resource to help you see where you are and where you are going, while giving comfort and strength for the journey”. 

Another person had a brain abscess and was seriously ill in hospital for about three months.  She said she wished she had taken Kitbag into hospital as she found it a great help after being discharged.  At home she used it every day.

She used the presence cards slowly, trying to “be the statement”.  She used the oils every day.  “It sounds silly, but that action of putting a little essential oil on every day became a symbol of something which I could for myself, not something which others did for me.” 

She used the kit every day, even on days when she felt tired and afterwards she always felt uplifted.  “The kit was a godsend”.  She feels it helped her to a fuller and speedier recovery saying it was “Better than the drugs”.

An important source of inspiration for Kitbag was the work of Bohart and Tallman and their ground-breaking book:  How Clients Make Therapy Work: the process of active self-healing.  Whilst written from the perspective of psychotherapy, their insights are just as important for recovery from physical illness.  Bohart and Tallman list a number of processes which are involved in self-healing which include:  acceptance, attention shift, cessation of self-blame, patience, tolerating uncertainty and ambiguity, perseverance, talking with others, getting a higher purpose etc. 

All these processes are promoted in Kitbag, particularly in the Transform and Hope cards.   

Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan provided valuable theoretical insights to shape the design of Kitbag. His starting point is that adults grow and change as they increase their mental complexity or what IFF would call their psychological capacity. His seminal work, “In Over Our Heads – the mental demands of modern life” demonstrated how a relatively small proportion of the population have this capability at present and yet the world is requiring this more than ever from us all.

Sixteen years on from “In Over Our Heads”, Kegan has written a further book, this time with a colleague, Lisa Laskow Lahey called “Immunity to Change – how to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organisation”. The book documents the way Kegan has used the insights from “In Over Our Heads” to create an intervention in organisations to develop capacity for leadership in rapidly changing times. As he puts it, “Skillful as … managers may be, their abilities will no longer suffice in a world that calls for leaders who can not only run but reconstitute their organisations – its norms, missions and culture – in an increasingly fast-changing environment.”

The case studies make for fascinating reading. Whilst all US based, many of the cultural challenges he writes about will sound familiar to people working in corporations, academic institutions and public services around the world.

Kegan’s approach resembles that of Nancy Kline, whose work has also been an inspiration for Kitbag. They both encourage us to reveal previously unexamined assumptions we have about the world, which can be transformational. Kegan concludes the book with advice to leaders on how they can lead so that people develop.

From a Kitbag perspective, I found this book very affirming. Kitbag recognises that adulthood is a time for ongoing growth and development. It provides support for people to make adaptive changes in their lives, offering short opportunities for real learning within everyday life. Using Kitbag on a regular basis helps people gain strength for their journey. When used in group situations in organisations, Kitbag helps to surface feelings and concerns that people are ignoring. It also encourages behaviour change in support of a change in mindset. Crucially, it provides all of this in a safe manner, thus supporting people whilst offering challenge to inspire people to make positive changes in their lives.

Having said all this, there are distinct differences in approach between Kitbag and Immunity to Change. Kitbag takes an evocative rather than an instrumental stance. Immunity to Change is heavily reliant on a cognitive approach to “push” people up the ladder of mental complexity. Kitbag assumes that people are already intrinsically whole but need help to discover this for themselves to appreciate better the paradox and mystery of life. For this reason, Kitbag is multi-sensory – not just head and heart, but smell, sight, touch and feel. In addition, Immunity to Change is designed as a process that leads to behaviour change, whereas new action is designed in from the start with Kitbag. Opening the bag, rolling out the mat, applying the roller oil provide a very different kind of experience from everyday life – a ritual where a different kind of space opens up.

Kegan has taken sixteen years to develop his practice since “In Over Our Heads” and now has a large number of case studies to support his approach. I hope Kitbag will grow over the next decade and beyond and in so doing, support global transformation.

Kitbag has been subject to testing and appraisal in three NHS organisations in the South West of England as part of the Living our Local Values project in the NHS.  This project was funded by the Department of Health to encourage staff to live their values at work.  The testing demonstrated that Kitbag provided a safe environment for staff to raise issues they otherwise found difficult to discuss.  As a result Kitbag has been recommended as a resource for NHS organisations particularly in situations where behaviour between staff was identified as being problematic. 

When the values of staff and organisations are congruent, productivity is enhanced so there are strong financial reasons for supporting values in the NHS in terms of better staff performance, lower staff turnover and short-term sickness absence.  In addition, the pressures facing health services today are not so much technical in nature but adaptive.  This means we have to grow the capacity of staff to deal with a more complex operating environment.  Kitbag provides resources to do this and if used creatively and iteratively, can support service transformation. 

Kitbag is now part of the Development Resource compiled as one of the outputs from the Living our Local Values project.  

Last summer at the Women in Prison event, I met a young woman from Chicago who talked to me about her father who had spent many years in prison.  She was very taken by Kitbag but could not afford to buy one so I offered her one on condition she wrote to me about its reception back home. 

She sent me this photo of her father exploring Kitbag and his partner sent me the following comments:

“My name is Karen Foster and we both know Khanisha Foster. She wanted to buy KitBag for her Father (my husband) Russell for this past Father’s Day, but when she heard the price she couldn’t afford it. You were kind enough to give her the KitBag. I want to let you know what a remarkable person you are to have done such a kind and generous act. We here in the States don’t see that much!!!  I am grateful. 

I have used KitBag often since Khanisha gave it to us. It has helped me mine some hidden talents that I was not aware of and some that I knew were there but I was too afraid to look at. It is a calming “tool” for my fevered mind - and I really mean that literally as I suffer from mental illness, in particular bi-polar disease. So when I’m experiencing mania, I now know where to go for relief.

Thank you again for your wonderful contribution to help heal our world - one KitBag at a time!”

This has been a busy time for me as I begin to share the lessons from this year’s trials of Kitbag in a variety of settings.  One area particularly close to my heart is the NHS, where I have worked for over 20 years, firstly as a junior doctor and then as a specialist in public health.  Kitbag is helping me open up the conversations we need to have about a health service fit for the 21st century. 

Staff have been giving me feedback on Kitbag and tell me how they value it for staying calm, having conversations in a more controlled way and for giving them ways to think about taking better care of themselves.  This is very much in keeping with one of the Hope cards in Kitbag which says, “The heart feeds itself first”.  This remark was made by Dr Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon from New York, who has helped IFF on the Kitbag project since it started.  He reminded us that the heart takes its blood supply directly from the lungs to provide it with the oxygen it needs to pump the blood around the rest of the body. 

How can healthcare workers feed their own hearts, ensuring they don’t burn out in the process of providing care and meeting the emotional needs of patients day in and day out? 

Many are finding that Kitbag can help, both as individuals and in teams.

IFF hosted a “Kitbag seminar” on June 29th this year about the globalisation of addiction.  The event was in partnership with KDOS a new Scottish-based organisation which is promoting global understanding of addiction and was supported by a donation from the Royal Society of the Arts who undertook a major review of drug policy in 2008.  The seminar centred on a presentation from Professor Bruce Alexander from Vancouver who has written a ground-breaking book called “The Globalisation of Addiction: a study in the poverty of spirit”.    This was followed by a series of discussions in small groups and closing with a general debate. 

The key point that Bruce made was that addiction has nothing to do with the drugs chosen.  All kinds of behaviours can be addictive - work, sex, gambling.  Our predisposition is largely as a result of dislocation - personal and at a community level.  When we lose a sense of belonging, a sense of self-worth, meaning and purpose in our lives, we become vulnerable, needy and look for solace in various ways.  Crucially, these adaptive responses help us regain a sense of ourselves, a community and a way of life.  Without these secondary rewards, the substance or behaviour would not be addictive. 

Kitbag is not just about the product, but about a culture of connectedness, the promotion of learning and the encouragement of us all to draw on our inner capacities to grow and heal.  I hope we might promote more seminars like this one in the future.

I’m going to Manchester on 4th September to show Kitbag as part of a Festival of Ideas for innovations in mental health.  I will be sharing the essence of Kitbag using a powerpoint presentation which you can access here  http://bit.ly/19n1hX  and you can find out more about the Festival of Ideas here http://bit.ly/3v349k 

I hope to meet others who are looking for a transformative response to the “crisis of the psychosphere” as IFF member Maureen O’Hara would say.

A group of 11 women from Kelty, a former mining village in Fife, participated in a development course earlier this year to boost their confidence and improve their capacities for self care.   They each received a Kitbag and worked with Cath and myself over three sessions to really get to know it and use it for themselves. 

They became very interested to hear IFF had developed a children’s version.  They wanted to introduce it to the nursery school in the village where many of them had links.  When told we them that we had no funds for this, they offered to do a sponsored walk!  This was evidence not only of how their confidence had grown, but how much they saw Kitbag as playing a role in doing so.  Kitbag generates the desire to “Create for others what you would create for yourself”.

Some of the Kelty women walking for Kitbag

On June 18th this year, nine women and two children walked across the Forth Road Bridge together and raised over £400. These funds allowed us to make a print run of Animal Cards - a key ingredient in the children’s Kitbag. 

Kelty women and two children make it across the Forth Road Bridge

In July, I visited the nursery in Kelty and ran two short sessions for 4 year olds using the cards, music and stories.  At the end of the session, each child received a mini-version of Kitbag for Kids to take home and share with their parents.

On Thursday 11th June, I chaired a public debate on women in prison as part of an on-going art project by Eva Merz.  The debate began with Baroness Vivien Stern giving a passionate speech about the injustice of women in prison.  This injustice stems from two main reasons.  The first is that 90% of women in prison are dependent on drugs, 80% have mental illness and 50% self harm.  These women need help not punishment.  The second reason is that custodial sentences are doubly punitive for many women because they have caring roles - for children or for ageing parents.  This is rarely the case for men.  So a prison sentence of 3 months has a completely different impact on a mother of young children than it has on a man.  This difference is so significant that the South African government has recently passed a law requiring the judge passing sentence to take into account the caring responsibilities of the offender. 

The next speaker was former First Minister for Scotland, Henry McLeish.  He spoke about his work for the Scottish Commission on Prison Reform which deliberately kept discussion of women’s issues to a minimum, because there is a segment of Scottish society that wants to see “bad” women imprisoned because they “deserve” harsher sentences than men.  He argued that no judge should be able to send people to prison for less than 6 months and that conditional and community sentencing were better options.

The final speaker was former governor of Cornton Vale Prison, Ian Gunn.  He presented some of the challenges facing Cornton Vale.  For one thing, the media love stories about female offenders and will harrass women without any thought for their welfare or privacy. 

Over 60 people from several different countries attended the event.  They had a mix of backgrounds in the arts, academia and policy making.  They generated an interesting discussion which continued long after the formal part of the evening was over. 

This was an opportunity for me to share more of the Kitbag story and also discover the creativity and richness in bringing arts and policy people together.

Thanks to Eva and the newsocialartschool for making this happen!

“The kitbags arrived safely and I used them with the students last Thursday.  The students had a wonderful time with them. 

I did not want to be too prescriptive with how the groups would flow or work

Students were in groups of 6.  They followed the instructions in Kitbag and took turns to consider what each aspect enabled them to think about or do. 

They all brought something special and a photo to the groups  The exercises around presence and hope  they really engaged in, creating an appreciation for what they wanted their practice to be about with patients and others.

The opportunity to engage in this way with each other elicited  different conversations that were reflective and explored the creativity of what practice could be or should be.

We then had fun doing creative things to reflect these ideas.

The most interesting element that I observed emerging was that all the students engaged in identifying why becoming an occupational therapist was important to them and how they wanted to make their practice more enriching.

Thank you sincerely for giving us the Kitbags. I see them being a very useful tool for reflection and learning for occupational therapy students.”

I am now exploring ways of opening up more opportunities for health professionals in training to use Kitbag.

Kitbag being used by occupational therapy students at Robert Gordon University