COVID-19 Mental Health Response

At our Spring Retreat, associates working in the mental health sector shared a grim picture of their host country’s needs. Mental health care is slowly improving, but stigma and politics still get in the way. Many people cannot access help, especially outside first tier cities and in rural areas. Furthermore, the country needs not just more counselors but psychiatrists. There are only 2 psychiatrists per 100,000 people in a country of 1.4 billion, compared with 13 per 100,000 in the US.

Even as the U.S. and many countries cautiously reopen the economy, the fear of a second wave of infection is palpable. The road to recovery will be long and hard.

But we believe God is sovereign, purposeful, just and merciful. What would the Great Commandment and the Great Commission look like in the post-COVID world?

COVID-19 Mental Health Response

This is Gordon and his family’s 8th year in East Asia. He heads the mental health service of a large hospital. Like everybody else, he and his wife have to work online from home, help their young children with classes and homework online, run the house, and find creative solutions for the inconveniences of a lockdown. In the midst of all this, calls for help pour in from churches and the community.

Daniel and his parents are recovering from COVID-19 infection in Bethlehem, but still in quarantine. From his “cell”, he reflects on our call to share the hope of the resurrection first to ourselves, and to those around us.

As this story is posted, Daniel and his parents are still recovering from COVID-19 infection.

Tony and Gina have been stuck in the Midwest for two months now, unable to return to the field because of travel bans.

Arriving in his hometown late February, Tony found that information about the coronavirus was limited. People were unprepared. The entrepreneur in him sprang into action.