Hansel Arroyo, MD, and Lyse Aybar, LCSW
Two Mount Sinai mental health professionals traveled to Puerto Rico in February to aid residents recovering from recent disasters—Hurricane Dorian in August 2019 and a 6.4 earthquake in January 2020. Thousands of displaced people are living in government camps, as smaller quakes still shake the island.
“This is a serious ongoing crisis. People have been traumatized, and they need mental health assistance,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, who on Monday, February 3, sent a delegation of 26 bilingual volunteers to Puerto Rico, including Hansel Arroyo, MD, Director of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai’s Institute for Advanced Medicine and Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery; and Lyse Aybar, LCSW, Clinical Manager of the Comprehensive Emergency Psychiatric Program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel.
Deployed from four days to a week, volunteers provided crisis counseling in government camps and in the cities Yuaco and Villabla; conducted mental health canvassing; and staffed a crisis telephone hotline.