The intervention arm participants will receive a cash transfer to support them in their businesses PLUS 5 weekly face-to-face group sessions of Problem Management Plus(PM+ for entrepreneurs). Duration of each session is 2 hours. Session 1 orients participants to the intervention with motivational interviewing techniques to improve engagement, provides information about common reactions to adversity, and trains participants in a basic stress management strategy (slow breathing). Session 2 discusses problem solving technique.Sessions 3 and 4 support participants' continued application of problem solving, behavioral activation, and stress management and introduce strategies to strengthen social support networks. In session 5, education about retaining intervention gains and self-care are provided and all learned strategies are reviewed.

The control arm will receive a cash transfer only to support them in their businesses.

The intervention arm will receive 5 weekly face-to-face group sessions of Problem Management Plus(PM+ for entrepreneurs). Duration of each session is 2 hours. Session 1 orients participants to the intervention with motivational interviewing techniques to improve engagement,provides information about common reactions to adversity, and trains participants in a basic stress management strategy (slow breathing). Session 2 addresses a participant-selected problem using problem-solving techniques. Sessions 3 and 4 support participants' continued application of problem solving, behavioral activation, and stress management and introduce strategies to strengthen social support networks. In session 5, education about retaining intervention gains and self-care are provided and all learned strategies are reviewed.

The primary outcome is change in the prevalence of psychological distress as measured by PHQ-9 in the intervention arm as compared to the control arm. The 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), incorporates DSM-IV depression diagnostic criteria with other key major depressive symptoms (Kroenke et al, 2001). Participants rate their responses on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from not at all to nearly every day. The PHQ-9 total severity score ranges from 0 to 27. The PHQ-9 has been validated in the Urdu language, showing adequate sensitivity and specificity (Husain et al 2006) and has been used in recent studies in KP (Rahman et al, 2016).

Well-being will be measured by WHO 5 Well-being index (Topp, et al, 2015). WHO-5 is a short and generic global rating scale measuring subjective well-being, the respondent is asked to rate how well each of the 5 statements applies to him or her when considering the last 14 days. The instrument will be administered to study participants at 3 months post intervention to rate their subjective well being in last 14 days. Each of the 5 items is scored from 5 (all of the time) to 0 (none of the time). The raw score ranges from 0 (absence of well-being) to 25 (maximal well-being). Scores are then converted to a percentage scale from 0 (absent) to 100 (maximal).