Picture a 13-year-old in Mongolia lying awake, worried about school and friends and whether she fits in. Now picture a mother in eastern Ukraine waiting out another air raid alarm, with the nearest therapist hours away on roads that aren’t safe to drive.
Their struggles are very different, but both of them deserve care.
That’s why mental health support is harder to define than it sounds. It isn’t one service, and it doesn’t always come from a psychiatrist’s office. Sometimes it’s a counselor on a video call. Sometimes it’s a teacher who notices a student has gone quiet, or a group of teenagers learning to put their feelings into words.
Всемирный день психического здоровья falls on October 10, and this year’s theme is “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change.” In that spirit, we want to show you what care for the mind actually looks like in three very different places ADRA serves. You’ll see why reaching people well means showing up in more than one way, and where your support fits in.
What Is Mental Health Support, and Why Does It Take Many Forms?
Поддержка психического здоровья — это любая помощь, которая помогает людям справляться со стрессом, восстанавливаться после тяжелых переживаний и сохранять эмоциональное благополучие. Она может включать в себя как профессиональное консультирование и психиатрическое лечение, так и более простые вещи: человека, умеющего выслушать, безопасную группу, в которой можно поговорить, или навыки борьбы с тревогой. В большинстве случаев такая помощь оказывается в привычных местах, а не в клиниках.
The need is enormous. According to the WHO Foundation, about 1 in 8 people worldwide live with a mental health condition. That rises to 1 in 7 adolescents and 1 in 5 people who have lived through conflict.
So why can’t more people just see a professional? Because in much of the world, there aren’t enough of them. The World Health Organization’s Mental Health Gap Action Programme notes that only about 1% of the global health workforce provides mental health care, and that 76% to 85% of people with a mental health condition in low- and middle-income countries get no treatment at all.
You can’t close a gap that size with specialists alone. That’s why the WHO and many governments now train teachers, community health workers, and volunteers to provide basic psychological care, an approach researchers call task sharing.
ADRA has worked alongside communities for more than 40 years and now serves in about 120 countries, with a dedicated mental health specialist guiding its approach. In our experience, good mental health support usually takes one of three forms:
- Building resilience before a crisis, so people have coping skills when life gets hard.
- Equipping everyday helpers, so the people closest to a struggling person know how to respond.
- Reaching people in the middle of a crisis, even when distance or danger keeps them from a clinic.
Let’s look at what each one looks like on the ground.
Form 1: Building Resilience Before a Crisis
The best time to learn how to handle stress is before you’re overwhelmed by it. In Mongolia, ADRA is helping teenagers do exactly that.
How NextGen CELEBRATIONS! works
Праздники нового поколения! is ADRA’s youth version of CELEBRATIONS!, a whole-person health framework from the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Health Ministries Department. Each letter stands for a health principle. Two of them, Optimism and Social Support, speak directly to mental wellbeing, and they run through everything the program does.
The program runs health clubs in four Mongolian schools for students aged 12 to 15. What makes it different is who leads it. Trained youth ambassadors plan the activities, run workshops, and speak up about health in their schools and on local radio.
What mental health support looks like in a health club
Mental wellbeing sits at the center of the clubs. On any given week, students might take part in:
- Emotional wellbeing workshops. Students talk openly about stress, self-esteem, and coping, in a group where it’s safe to be honest.
- Friendship sessions. Teens learn how to build and keep good friendships, which is one of the strongest buffers against loneliness.
- Screen time reflection. Activities help students notice their digital habits and how those habits affect their mood and sleep.
- Outdoor hikes and sports days. Physical activity with friends, parents, and teachers lifts mood and builds connection at the same time.
Parents and teachers aren’t spectators, either. Families join events, and many parents say their kids now come home and talk through what they learned at the dinner table. That ripple matters, because a teen’s coping skills only stick when the adults around them reinforce them.
The change shows up in small, personal ways. One youth ambassador, Otgonmend, describes becoming “more confident in expressing myself to others.”
Why start before a crisis?
The World Health Organization estimates that half of all mental health conditions begin before age 18. Adolescence is a window when habits form, for better or worse.
Weanne Estrada-Magbanua, ADRA International’s mental health specialist, puts it this way: when teens learn to manage stress, they are “literally rewiring their brains” to handle pressure better.
Prevention work rarely makes headlines, because nothing dramatic happens. That’s the whole point.
Form 2: Equipping Everyday Helpers With Psychological First Aid
When a student is grieving or anxious, the first adult to notice usually isn’t a counselor. It’s a teacher. In the Philippines, ADRA is making sure those teachers know what to do next.
What is psychological first aid?
Psychological first aid (PFA) is an evidence-informed approach for helping children, teens, adults, and families in the days and weeks after a disaster or traumatic event. It was developed by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the National Center for PTSD. Its goal is to ease early distress and help people cope, both right away and over the long run.
One thing makes PFA especially humane. It doesn’t assume that everyone who goes through something terrible will develop serious mental health problems. Instead, it expects people to react in many different ways, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and it gives helpers a flexible way to respond to whatever a person needs most.
PFA is built around eight core actions:
- Make contact. Reach out, or respond when someone reaches out, in a gentle and respectful way.
- Offer safety and comfort. Help the person feel physically safe and emotionally cared for.
- Help them steady themselves. Calm and orient someone who feels overwhelmed, if they need it.
- Ask what they need. Learn about their most pressing needs and worries so the help fits.
- Give practical help. Work with them on the immediate problems in front of them.
- Connect them with people. Help them reach family, friends, and others in the community who can support them.
- Share coping information. Explain common stress reactions and simple ways to manage them.
- Link them to services. Point them toward further help they may need now or later.
PFA was first designed for disaster response, but its creators have since adapted it for school staff, faith leaders, and others who work closely with families. That’s what makes it such a natural fit for a teacher’s toolkit.
It works a lot like physical first aid. A bandage doesn’t replace a doctor, but it matters a great deal in the first few minutes.
Training teachers to train others
Before the new school year, ADRA Philippines led a psychological first aid training for faculty and staff at Mindanao Mission Academy, with support from the South Philippine Union Conference Education Department.
It was a training of trainers. That detail matters more than it might seem. Each person trained can go on to teach colleagues, which means one session keeps paying off long after ADRA’s facilitators have gone home.
The training also made an important point that’s easy to miss. Psychological first aid isn’t only for earthquakes and typhoons. Students and staff deal with stress, grief, and anxiety in ordinary weeks too, and a school that knows how to respond becomes a safer place to learn.
For example, imagine a student whose grandmother has just died. A teacher trained in PFA knows to make space for that student, listen without rushing to fix anything, and check whether the family needs more help. Small moments like that are often where healing starts.
Form 3: Reaching People in Crisis, Wherever They Are
War doesn’t just damage buildings. It wears people down, slowly, over months and years. In Ukraine, about 10.8 million people need humanitarian aid in 2026, and roughly 3.7 million are displaced from their homes, according to UNHCR. Most have been displaced for more than a year.
The people who need mental health support most are often the hardest to reach. Near the front line, trained psychologists are scarce. Traveling to see one can mean a long trip on roads that aren’t safe.
Mental health support by phone and video
So ADRA brings the counselor to them. In September 2026, АДРА Япония and its partners launched a new phase of their work in Ukraine built around remote care:
- One-on-one online counseling with professional psychologists, for people facing anxiety, grief, panic attacks, sleep problems, and family stress.
- Online group sessions, where people facing similar struggles practice coping skills together and feel less alone.
- Referrals to psychiatric care when someone needs more specialized treatment.
- Free online legal consultations on problems like lost documents, damaged housing, and access to government support.
That last item might seem out of place in a post about mental health. It isn’t. When you’ve lost your home and can’t get the paperwork to claim compensation, the stress doesn’t go away with a breathing exercise. Solving the practical problem is part of healing, and ADRA connects the two on purpose.
A participant named Alisa, describing an earlier phase of this work, remembered that even during blackouts, “there was still space to talk, listen, and feel understood.”
Training the helpers who stay
ADRA also runs online training for local social workers, teachers, health workers, and volunteers. Sessions cover psychological first aid, how to support people with disabilities, and how to respond to gender-based violence.
In a long war, outside help can’t reach everyone. Local helpers who can spot distress, respond with care, and connect people to services will still be there after any single project ends.
The Common Thread: Most Mental Health Support Comes From Ordinary People
Look closely at all three stories and a pattern shows up. Psychologists matter, and ADRA works with them. But most of the support in these communities comes from people without a clinical title: a teenage ambassador, a schoolteacher, a social worker, a parent.
Each place relies on a different group of everyday helpers. In Mongolia, it’s youth ambassadors leading school health clubs, backed by parents and teachers. In the Philippines, it’s teachers and staff learning psychological first aid and passing those skills on to colleagues. In Ukraine, it’s local social workers, teachers, health workers, and volunteers trained to spot distress and connect people to the right care.
This is the part of humanitarian mental health work that’s easy to overlook, and we think it’s the most important. A counselor can see a limited number of people in a week. A trained teacher sees hundreds of students every day, for years.
When you support ADRA’s health programs, your gift helps put skilled, caring people in the places where someone is most likely to need them. And because those people live there, they stay long after a project wraps up.
How You Can Support Mental Health Work Around the World
At ADRA, we believe every person deserves to live as God intended, whole in body, mind, and spirit. On this World Mental Health Day, you can help make that real for someone carrying a weight no one else can see.
Give to ADRA’s health work today, или become a monthly partner and help keep this care going all year long.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mental Health Support
What is the theme of World Mental Health Day 2026?
World Mental Health Day is observed every year on October 10. The World Federation for Mental Health chose “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change” as the 2026 theme. It calls attention to people living with mental health challenges and asks communities and leaders to listen to them when shaping care.
What is the difference between mental health support and psychosocial support?
Mental health support is a broad term for any care that protects or restores emotional wellbeing, including therapy and psychiatric treatment. Psychosocial support focuses on the link between a person’s inner life and their social world. It includes group activities, safe spaces, and practical help that rebuild a sense of safety, connection, and control.
Who can give psychological first aid?
Almost anyone can give psychological first aid with basic training. Teachers, volunteers, health workers, faith leaders, and neighbors all can. It doesn’t involve diagnosing or treating anyone. It means listening, asking what the person needs, connecting them with support, and protecting them from further harm. Professionals step in when someone needs more help.
How does ADRA provide mental health support around the world?
ADRA provides mental health support in three main ways. It builds coping skills before a crisis, as with school health clubs for teens in Mongolia. It trains everyday helpers, like teachers in the Philippines, in psychological first aid. And it reaches people in crisis, including through online counseling for families affected by the war in Ukraine.
How can I help people struggling with mental health in crisis-affected communities?
You can help by supporting organizations that train local helpers and offer care where people live. A gift to ADRA’s health work supports counseling, psychological first aid training, and programs that build resilience in young people. Sharing stories like these also helps, because it chips away at the stigma that keeps people from asking for help.
