Com­mu­ni­ty can act as a pro­tec­tive force pre­vent­ing men­tal health crises. Liv­ing in a sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty—coun­try, vil­lage, street, or neigh­bour­hood—has val­ue for both pre­ven­tion and re­cov­ery. Com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tions are as­so­ci­at­ed with both bet­ter men­tal health and pre­ven­tion of men­tal dis­or­ders.

Holt Lun­stad (2024) writes, “There is a ro­bust ev­i­dence base link­ing so­cial con­nec­tion to men­tal health out­comes. So­cial con­nec­tion plays a vi­tal role in pre­vent­ing men­tal health prob­lems, main­tain­ing good men­tal health, and aid­ing in the re­cov­ery from both mod­er­ate and se­vere men­tal health con­di­tions, while iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness have been as­so­ci­at­ed with poor­er men­tal health.”

“Most of this ev­i­dence,” she says, “re­gards de­pres­sion, with few­er stud­ies con­sid­er­ing oth­er men­tal dis­or­ders,” in her work ti­tled, “So­cial con­nec­tion as a crit­i­cal fac­tor for men­tal and phys­i­cal health: ev­i­dence, trends, chal­lenges, and fu­ture im­pli­ca­tions.”

As I wrote this in­tro­duc­tion, I was un­cer­tain which as­pect of com­mu­ni­ty to se­lect be­cause, as I keep say­ing, we live in a coun­try of high prej­u­dice and low aware­ness and no vis­i­ble on­go­ing ed­u­ca­tion to im­pact the is­sue. Na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty seemed the best choice.

There is ev­i­dence to show that if the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty be­comes more sen­si­tised, it could re­dound to bet­ter foun­da­tions for the more in­ti­mate com­mu­ni­ty lev­els of vil­lage, street, neigh­bour­hood. The first aim, to my mind then, for T&T, must be the re­duc­tion of men­tal health stig­ma.

It is im­por­tant at all lev­els to nor­malise dis­cus­sions around men­tal health and to have sus­tained cam­paigns aimed at in­creas­ing un­der­stand­ing.

Nor­mal­is­ing talk­ing about men­tal ill­ness­es, cri­sis, is­sues or dis­or­ders can help peo­ple feel more se­cure to seek help and sup­port with­out fear of judge­ment.

But to get to that through a na­tion­al cam­paign, those who are charged with lead­er­ship must have a con­vic­tion that the need for bet­ter men­tal health here war­rants na­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion. If that is not present at that lev­el, then such ac­tions would nev­er be jus­ti­fied or de­fen­si­ble for in­clu­sion in the na­tion­al pro­gram­ming and ex­pen­di­ture.

For over 20 years, Scot­land’s See Me pro­gramme has been the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ven­tion for the re­duc­tion of stig­ma through “gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pro­grammes, cam­paigns, and strat­e­gy doc­u­ments that fo­cus on ar­eas like men­tal health and so­cial iso­la­tion”.

A 20-year re­view of the See Me cam­paign (2022) showed that 80 per cent of Scots feel more con­fi­dent now talk­ing about their own men­tal health, an in­crease of 58 per cent over two decades since the base­line rate was 22 per cent.

This na­tion­al pro­gramme, which works to end men­tal health stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion, is fund­ed by the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment and man­aged by the com­pa­ny Scot­tish Ac­tion for Men­tal Health and by the UK char­i­ty, the Men­tal Health Foun­da­tion (www.seemescot­land.org/about-see-me).

Liv­ing in a so­ci­ety with high­er lev­els of ac­cep­tance, com­pas­sion, and re­spect for the dig­ni­ty of those liv­ing with men­tal dis­or­ders can pro­mote a bet­ter sense of be­long­ing and iden­ti­ty for those af­flict­ed. The sense of ac­knowl­edge­ment at a wider pop­u­la­tion lev­el pro­motes con­nect­ed­ness, pur­pose, and iden­ti­ty, all fun­da­men­tal to bet­ter well-be­ing.

If we live in a space of ac­cep­tance, we are more like­ly to reach out rather than choose iso­la­tion, lone­li­ness, and alone­ness, the most sig­nif­i­cant risk fac­tors for anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion.

Of­ten, lit­er­a­ture says com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers should “ed­u­cate them­selves” about var­i­ous men­tal health con­di­tions. They speak of com­mu­ni­ties gain­ing un­der­stand­ing of symp­toms and ef­fects and be­ing able to recog­nise some­one strug­gling and need­ing at­ten­tion.

But how does this evolve with­out struc­ture or lead­er­ship? How do we see com­mu­ni­ties here ral­ly­ing around this cause?

In my ex­pe­ri­ence, it is most­ly af­fect­ed fam­i­lies that at­tempt to ini­ti­ate ac­tion. Too of­ten, the bur­den of man­ag­ing the ill­ness in one­self or in one’s fam­i­ly su­per­sedes that de­sire for com­mu­ni­ty out­reach.

I know. There are so many ef­forts I have ini­ti­at­ed and wish to bring to fruition. There are so many de­signed pro­grammes to be im­ple­ment­ed. But if it de­pends on me, I know that it would lose sup­port and dri­ve at every low sea­son, every spell of en­nui and lethar­gy, and would have to take sec­ond place to self-care/self-love.

My years of man­ag­ing men­tal ill­ness­es and liv­ing in this so­ci­ety tell me, in a prej­u­diced so­ci­ety like ours, peo­ple who do not ex­pe­ri­ence the dif­fi­cul­ties of men­tal ill­ness­es, is­sues or dis­or­ders are not gen­er­al­ly in­clined to mount­ing cam­paigns of aware­ness or de­fence. Of­ten, their ef­forts fo­cus on mon­etis­ing as­pects of the is­sues.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­posed the is­sues of men­tal ill­ness­es and men­tal health strug­gles to a wider pop­u­la­tion but the re­turn to “nor­mal” seemed to have rel­e­gat­ed the is­sue to less­er em­pha­sis.

Then, this past week, liv­ing among na­tion­als in “height­ened alert” no­tices, the Unit­ed States’ war­ring rhetoric about and pos­tur­ing to­wards Venezuela, with sug­ges­tions of covert ac­tion, the on­go­ing killing of al­leged “nar­co-ter­ror­ists”, along with T&T’s leader’s un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for the killings and con­tin­ued “in­ter­ven­tion”, I can­not help my thoughts about this na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s readi­ness for a men­tal health re­sponse to a man­made emer­gency or dis­as­ter of the mag­ni­tude to which this could pos­si­bly es­ca­late.

How pre­pared is the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for man­ag­ing its well-be­ing in a such a cri­sis?

How would small­er com­mu­ni­ties ral­ly?