Trauma

Haitian Mental Health Needs Increase Yet Again Due to COVID-19

  • Posted on: 18 July 2020
  • By: Bryan Schaaf

Haiti’s investment in health has dropped from 16.6 percent in 2004 to 4.4 percent in 2017 despite everything its people have been through since then - unrest, cholera, natural disasters, the earthquake, COVID-19, gender-based violence, and grinding poverty.  Opportunities to consult formally trained mental health workers rmeain rare.  For a country of nearly 11 million, Haiti also only has 23 psychiatrists and 124 psychologists.  Some alternatives, such as hotlines, are beginning to emerge in response.  Linked and below is an article by Jessica Obert in the New Humanitarian about the mental health situation in Haiti.