Mental health app for OFWs available

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino workers in Macau can monitor their physical and mental health conditions by answering health-related questions on a weekly basis.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) yesterday reported that a mobile app offering mental wellness services is available for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Macau.

DOLE said the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Macau has rolled out the app dubbed “Kumusta, Kabayan” to ensure the mental wellness of OFWs during the pandemic.

The POLO invited Filipino workers to use the electronic monitoring health system, which would be available for them until December.

“Like other demographic groups, overseas Filipino workers in Macau have also experienced physical or mental health challenges caused by uncertainties during the pandemic,” POLO Macau noted.

The system was originally developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the help of researchers at universities and social organizations.

Different language versions of the system have been developed and tested in different regions of the world.

The POLO said the app has been proven to be useful in helping users cope with stress and emotional disturbance.

Meanwhile, the number of Filipinos facing mental health issues due to the coronavirus disease seems to be on the decline, according to a psychiatrist of the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH).

In an interview with “The Chiefs” aired over OneNews/TV5 on Tuesday night, Bernard Argamosa, NCMH suicide prevention program consultant-in-charge, said the center’s crisis hotline recorded a drop in the number of calls from people seeking help in August, following a surge in the past four months.

“In the first 20 days of August, we received about 400 calls. The number is going down. I think one of the possible reasons is that people have started to adjust and cope with the pandemic,” Argamosa said.

“We need another three months maybe to see the trend, although we were surprised with the large decline,” he said.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the NCMH crisis hotline recorded a high volume of calls from April to July.

The calls, she said, peaked in June when the center recorded a total of 1,115 calls.

The NCMH Crisis Hotline received an average of 400 calls per month from May 2019 to February 2020.

The figure surged to an average of 876 per month since the community quarantine was imposed in March.

A monthly average of 53 calls were suicide-related and a majority of the callers were females belonging to 18 to 30-year-old age group.

Most of the calls came from Metro Manila with 618, followed by Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) with 241.

Vergeire said suicide-related calls peaked in July when the center posted a total of 115 calls.

She clarified that some of the calls may be “repeat calls” or from the same individuals.

“Mostly, the calls came from people whose situation were exacerbated by the pandemic,” Vergeire said, noting that anxiety due to the pandemic was the most common reason cited by the callers.

Since last year up to August, Vergeire said the NCMH had served a total of 9,494 Filipinos.

Argamosa said the NCMH hotline has been operating for 15 months, but the surge in calls started only after the imposition of the community quarantine in mid-March.

“It’s double the number of calls we have been getting in the first eight months of our operation. People started to get really worried because this is something new,” he said.

Aside from callers in the crisis hotline, Argamosa said the NCMH had served returning overseas Filipino workers in quarantine facilities.

With the start of the holiday season, he expressed optimism that fewer people would be needing mental health services despite the pandemic.

“In December, we had a lower number of suicide calls and I hope the season will encourage us to be happy and the calls will decline,” he said.

Argamosa said the NCMH is preparing for the worst and has extended their services to different platforms to address the health concerns of more people, including frontliners.

72 dead OFWs return home

As this developed, DOLE reported that the remains of 72 more overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who died in Saudi Arabia will arrive tomorrow.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said a chartered flight carrying the bodies of 62 and 10 OFWs who died of COVID and other causes,respectively, would arrive at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at 9:40 a.m.

“The same respect will be accorded to the arriving OFWs who lost their lives in the KSA in pursuit of a better future for their families and motherland,” Bello said in a statement.

Bello said of the 72 remains, 40 are from Al Khobar, 17 from Jeddah and 15 from Riyadh. The figures brought to 264 the total remains of OFWs repatriated from Saudi Arabia.

The 72 bodies represent the fourth batch of dead OFWs covered by the repatriation program of the labor department through the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the POLO in Saudi Arabia.

The first three batches involving 192 remains of migrant workers were brought home on separate occasions last month