There are indications that the coronavirus has affected everyone

around the world in some way, with more than 36 million people
infected and over a million people having lost their lives. To make
matters worse, this pandemic has threatened not just physical but
also psychological health, with experts warning that this will show in
increased suicide rates.

Papua New Guinea, with over eight hundred and fourty languages, presents the most complex
of situations for transcultural understandings of what it means to be mentally ill.

In Papua New Guinea, where health facilities can be remote and difficult to access, the
pandemic only makes a tough situation worse. The pandemic brings uncertainty with sudden or
unexpected loss of lives. It all adds up. Anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, insomnia, fatigue,
irritability, and anger are just some of the ways the threat of pandemic can leave a mark on the
mental health of communities.

COVID-19 has reshaped the delivery of health care in papua new guinea.
The threat of overwhelming the health system with a sudden surge of
patients has led health authorities to rapidly review COVID-19 patient care
pathways including provision of essential medical services across the
country.

Subsequent policy has supported the development of general hospital

psychiatry units in provincial hospitals, although staffing them with qualified
mental health staff has not been achieved and several units have closed in
recent years

Again, this is compounded by the threat of COVID-19 and the

associated changes. Even though the number of COVID-19 cases in
Pacific countries is limited, the mental helath impacts of the
pandemic are causing significant distress in small island nations
itself and together we can eradicate mental health issues all over
the world.
.

The theme that the stresses associated with cultural transition were causative of
acute psychosis recurs throughout the early PNG literature. The first
government-initiated investigation into mental illness in 1957 produced a report
that initiated much of the subsequent development in mental health in PNG.
Soon after, an admission facility was established at Laloki 10 miles north of Port
Moresby near the Bomana Correctional Facility, where psychiatric patients had
previously been held in indefinite detention in an annex.

. In forecasting culturally relativist approaches, the report stated that ‘the

mental health of an individual can be assessed only in relation to his culture and
environment’.