Mental Health Services During COVID-19 Pandemic

India is witnessing an unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases. The second wave of the pandemic has devastated the country's healthcare infrastructure and life as we know it. The toll this pandemic has had on the mental health of Covid patients and their families, while beyond measure, is a serious concern for the country. There are sweeping anxieties and fears of contracting the infection. And, more importantly, that's twined with the comfort we have in people we trust collapsing around us. As a whole population, Indians are feelings of isolation, anxiety, stress, depression, guilt, and loneliness. Those who have survived COVID have dealt with intensive medical interventions and will deal with long-haul symptoms such as anxiety, panic attacks, brain fog, survivor guilt, and PTSD. Children have had their lives disrupted. When it comes to children's mental health, we often seem to be in a blind spot. One reason could be: we don't want to acknowledge it and it's very hard for us as a society to accept it. In many parts of India, women who have found themselves in a very patriarchal society, locked in their homes, not only having to deal with their work but also with their kids and with other domestic responsibilities are facing increasing rates of abuse and stress.

MINDS Foundation in CNN September 2020: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/06/india/india-mental-health-dst-intl-hnk/index.html

1. MINDS Counseling Centre: Due to the acute need for increased psychotherapy services, MINDS will gear funding and resources towards upscaling our services, delivered virtually to a PAN-India population. These sessions will be lead by trained clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. We aim to bring on 4 dedicated professional to provide a minimum of 200 hours of psychotherapy a week.
2. MINDS Distress Helpline: We have been operating a Mental Health Distress Line for a number of years. Typically, we receive calls from all over India and assist in crisis management and connecting folks with local care. Due to limitations of staffing and financial resources, we have had to limit hours of operation. During the COVID pandemic in 2020, we saw an increase of 260% of calls/messages to our MINDS Distress Line from all over India. We propose here to upscale our services to provide 24/7 services with the line staffed by trained mental health social workers and clinical psychologists.
3. Content & Resource Development: MINDS is one of the only organizations focused on servicing the rural population with mental health services. Due to lockdowns we are limited in in-person interactions with them, but we will be developing increased multimedia content to be shared and spread across digital platforms such as a micro-website and WhatsApp. Additionally, we will be increasing mental health literacy via guides, toolkits, and coping strategies during this critical time--all of which will be shared across social media platforms, corporate and media partners, and network of institutions.

We aim to make our Counseling Centre services and MINDS Distress Helpline available to anyone in India regardless of where they are or who they are. We will ensure to hire staff to cover a number of languages as well. Our content & resources will be available for a larger global audience.

Our hotline will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our counseling centre aims to provide by starting 200 hours of psychotherapy weekly.