(Our Bureau, May 24) Over 400 mental health practitioners from across the globe are volunteering to support healthcare workers who are in the frontline of India’s fight against Covid-19. Called the Indian Network of the Diaspora for Essential Aid and Relief (INDEAR), the initiative was started by Pune-based psychologist Dr Radhika Bapat and US-based Dr Uma Chandrika Millner, in association with the Asian American Psychological Association. It brings together psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers who offer free mental health support to doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, hospital staff, policemen and crematorium staff. The pandemic is taking a toll on the mental health of frontline Covid workers who are working in long shifts under difficult circumstances and witnessing deaths everyday. “Doctors are having an emotional breakdown because we’ve not been so helpless,” a teary-eyed Mumbai doctor said in a video that went viral recently.
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