Joy Bittner: Tackling Depression Among Ecuadorian Poor & Refugees

In this episode, we speak to Joy Bittner. Joy Bittner is the founder of Vida Plena, an organization invested in building strong mental health in Latin America. Vida Plena does this by training local communities to provide mental health care for depression. Joy majored in psychology in her undergraduate degree, then proceeded to do a master’s in social work in which she focused on social service administration. Later she did a second master’s in nonprofit management and has over 15 years of experience in non-profit management.

Some things we touch on in this episode:

• What it is like working within the mental health field.

• Why we should care about mental health as Christians.

• The intersection between faith, effective altruism, and mental health. 

• The lack of mental health care among the Latin American poor and how to provide of it.

• Joy’s career advice for Christians looking to work in mental health and looking to be impactful in the same breadth.