COVID-19 impact on the provision of psychosocial rehabilitation services in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Health care services have been deeply affected worldwide by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, and despite its importance to psychiatric reforms, very little has been written on actual responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in community psychiatry and psychosocial rehabilitation settings. Fifty-two mental health professionals from thirteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean were interviewed in May and June 2020 and shared their opinions on the state of psychosocial rehabilitation services and programs during the first one-hundred days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simple quantitative measures were added to a thematic analysis of responses. The results indicated that the disruption of group activities deeply affected psychosocial rehabilitation services, non-core activities (e.g., food and medication supply) became the most relevant aspects of these programs, shifting to remote mode proved to be a significant hurdle for many psychosocial rehabilitation service users, and long-term effect on rehabilitation services is expected by almost 90% of interviewees.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• psychosocial rehabilitation services
• Latin America
• psychiatric reform

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (MA) upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The larger study also included five other countries (i.e., Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and República Bolivariana de Venezuela)