Allsmiles because “our purpose is to give back smiles.” Therapy, she says, has an intangible voodoo around it. People think it is for those driven by angst or ennui, when, technically, everyone needs therapy, even when things are going well. Especially when things are going well. “What we say is, therapy is part of your life care. Every month, go for a check-in.”
It’s that kind of stigma that latches on like dirt you can’t wash off. “When you visit the village to talk about mental health, they think one is berated, or that they are possessed.” Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Ms Kainika has had to learn when to separate being a psychologist from being a businesswoman, tipping between her sunhat of monocrat and mentor.
She’s become a master of business diversification, expanding Allsmiles into therapy, rehabilitation, and accredited training for counselling psychology, marriage and family therapy—herself entrepreneurship’s Magna Cum Laude apprentice. Over the years, she has helped thousands of people. But the keystone in her cathedral of care is taking pride in the families Allsmiles has been able to restore.
Yet every zig has its zag, and she is no different, citing the lowest ebb in her career as when a patient leaves the rehabilitation facility and, like an alcoholic in a bar, relapses to their old habits. “Suicide ideation, too, is a deep mental health issue. You do everything possible for the client, only to realise they are no more.”
"When you become the servant of your work, there are no off-days."
What does she see in her crystal ball? “That anything mental health, we are there, Allsmiles.” This is despite the technology-powered elephant in the room, AI. Embrace change, she says. She concludes: “When you become the servant of your work, there are no off-days.”
-Eddy Ashioya