More than 50,000 Indonesians live in Japan, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, formal mental health support in their native language was absent until just two years ago, when TELL began offering counseling in Bahasa Indonesia, says clinical psychologist Felicia Nainggolan, the organization’s Indonesian-language counselor.
In this sense, TELL’s services in Bahasa Indonesia, which include online and in-person counseling, training, workshops and outreach activities, have filled a gap.
Founded in 1973 as an English-language counseling hotline, over the decades TELL has diversified its mental health services that cater to Japan’s international communities. It has also expanded the languages they’re offered in, which today include Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as Bahasa Indonesia.