Promoting mental health in community and research settings during COVID-19: perspectives and experiences from Soweto, South Africa. (Special Issue: Human biologists Confront the COVID-19 Pandemic.)

This commentary describes the potential mental health consequences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Soweto, South Africa, and offers potential strategies for promoting mental health in research and community settings during the pandemic It provides ethnographic accounts of COVID-19 through the lens of a fieldwork on trauma and mental health, and discusses new steps put in place to safeguard the mental health of research staff, study participants and their communities It offers these reflections not as a prescriptive model for researchers but to create a space to share effective strategies, discuss problems, and initiate a broader dialogue on this underappreciated aspect of fieldwork