A meeting about something completely different, resulted into getting acquainted with two wonderful inspiring women who gave me the information about a group of mental healthcare workers who travel around the Sporades and provide important help to those in need.
The mobile team Magnesia is part of a urban non profit organization called Diodos.The aim of the non profit organization, based in Volos and founded in 2005, is the psychosocial rehabilitation of people with chronic mental illness. They work towards prevention, they provide therapy, they try to improve the quality of life and working against stigmas. The team has been set up to reach remote areas like the island of the Sporades. It consists of a psychiatrist, a psychologist a social worker and a nurse.
(photo from a visit of the mobile team to the Skopelos community center)
Apart from the mobile team Diodos also manages an orphanage, a day center and protected housing.
The WHO writes on their homepage: This year’s World Mental Health Day, on 10 October, comes at a time when our daily lives have changed considerably as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The past months have brought many challenges: for health-care workers, providing care in difficult circumstances, going to work fearful of bringing COVID-19 home with them; for students, adapting to taking classes from home, with little contact with teachers and friends, and anxious about their futures; for workers whose livelihoods are threatened; for the vast number of people caught in poverty or in fragile humanitarian settings with extremely limited protection from COVID-19; and for people with mental health conditions, many experiencing even greater social isolation than before. And this is to say nothing of managing the grief of losing a loved one, sometimes without being able to say goodbye.
The economic consequences of the pandemic are already being felt, as companies let staff go in an effort to save their businesses, or indeed shut down completely.
Given past experience of emergencies, it is expected that the need for mental health and psychosocial support will substantially increase in the coming months and years. Investment in mental health programmes at the national and international levels, which have already suffered from years of chronic underfunding, is now more important than it has ever been.
This is why the goal of this year’s World Mental Health Day campaign is increased investment in mental health.
Diodos provides an important sevice to those in need on the Sporades and hopefully will do for a very long time.
For more information see below:
skopelosnews 
Beautiful and essential team!