Early career psychiatrists advocate reorientation not redeployment for COVID-19 care.

In this letter, as early career psychiatrists we highlight the urgent need to address the mental health fallout of the COVID 19 pandemic. We advocate the reorientation of mental healthcare services cadre to provide proactive mental health care services. For this purpose, the focus with regard to the COVID 19 pandemic needs to shift from acute care for the infected persons to the medium and long term care for those who are affected by COVID 19. The latter category includes survivors with protracted symptoms and family members. We also recognize the need for mental health surveillance and support for those losing loved ones, and experiencing financial and emotional adversities. This will also aid provision of better mental health care services by trainee and early career professional who through redeployment have had challenges in achieving learning and training competencies. Redeployment has affected Low and Middle income countries worse and reorientation will benefit these settings the most.