COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The phones start ringing early in the morning, with soft light seeping through straw curtains. Some voices are rushed, others struggle for words to talk about what is hurting them: Relationship troubles and war trauma, loneliness and financial stress. “We have people who start their day with us — they get up in the morning, call us and then go to work,” said Ranil Prasad Thilakaratne, manager of the CCC Line phone bank, a free counseling service in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. “They get the motivation, the encouragement, to face the day by calling us.”The hotline is thriving on the backs of a generous brigade of citizens brought together by a deeply rooted culture of volunteerism, stepping forward to help ease the load of Sri Lanka’s vast mental health problems after a three-decade civil war that ended in 2009. The service’s 90 or so volunteers are filling the breach in a country that by some measures is successfully recovering from the war but is still drastically underserved when it comes to treating mental illness, depression or even just everyday stresses.

Source: New York Times December 11, 2018 10:00 UTC