Mental Health in the DR

@andrieawashington

Here's a article

https://dominicantoday.com/dr/local/202 … h-service/

Once the link has been approved, I’ll read it. Thank you!!

We are well behind other countries in recognizing mental health and dealing with it.

Unless your Spanish is fluent and you have a good understanding of the culture here, it will be very difficult to work with the local community.

There is a large enough expat community to work from. Not sure how many recognize the need for help.

To work here you will need residency.

@andrieawashington I'm not sure it the article was approved. However, article was published in Dominican Today , an English written news

Once the link has been approved, I’ll read it. Thank you!!
-@andrieawashington

The link is available now!

@planner thank you for that. I’m working on becoming fluent in Spanish, at best right now is just conversational. Would a residency permit work while working in permanent residency? We’re building there right now and retirement is a couple of years away.

@CHRISTOPHER DAVID56 very interesting and sad indictment. There is definitely a need. Once settled in the culture i would very much like to be a part of the solution. Thanks

@planner thank you for that. I’m working on becoming fluent in Spanish, at best right now is just conversational. Would a residency permit work while working in permanent residency? We’re building there right now and retirement is a couple of years away.
-@andrieawashington

You will need to be fluent to work with any locals.   Your residency permit  -  do you mean your residency visa or your  first  residency application?  As I understand it you cannot work until your residency application is approved and you have your cedula number!

@planner thank you very much for that. I’m still getting the terminology down. This is a few years down the line. We’re just now beginning the building process.

@andrieawashington one off-topic comment based on your last post! If you are building, you need to be onsite on a regular basis! We went through the process and caught so many mistakes and misinterpretations of things that required rework. By being here to check progress, we caught things early and in time to have them corrected.

Back on topic - a residency visa is issued by the Dominican Consulate in your home country and allows you to enter DR for up to 60 days to submit your application for residency. As long as you've submitted your full application within those 60 days, you are able to stay in the country legally while your application is pending. There has been some confusion about being able to leave the country while your application is in process. There are no restrictions! We entered the DR twice during our 60 days, completing our application on our second trip, then left and returned 4 months later while the application was still pending. (For residents of countries not covered by the Tourist Card, this is likely different!) Your initial residency is always temporary - starting at one year, then two years, gradually working up to 10 years. Even "Permanent Residency" is not truly permanent, it still has to be renewed! The only way to live here permanently, without having to renew, is to get citizenship.

@ddmcghee Thank you for that information and clarification! We do travel there about twice a year but will definitely increase to keep an eye on things. We’re mainly looking at this as an investment property, however, as it gets closer to retirement we’re likely to stay for a month or two at a time. So the information you provided is quite useful. Thanks again.