Mental Health Awareness Week 2025: A Reflection on Community and Mental Wellbeing

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This year, Mental Health Awareness Week (12–18 May 2025) invites us to reflect on the theme of ‘Community.’ It’s a timely reminder that, while the conversation around mental health often focuses on the individual, we are always already embedded in wider networks—of family, culture, society, and spirit.

As a psycho-spiritual practitioner, I am reminded of how deeply spiritual traditions have always understood the importance of community—not just as a support system, but as a necessary condition for healing, growth, and liberation.

Sangha: Community as Refuge in Buddhism
Take Buddhism, for example. The tradition offers us the Three Jewels, or Three Refuges:
•    Buddha – the enlightened one, the teacher
•    Dharma – the teachings, or the path
•    Sangha – the community of practitioners
When Buddhists say they "take refuge," they are not only turning inward to meditation or upward to the transcendent—they are also turning towards one another. The Sangha is recognised as essential to the path of awakening. No one walks the path alone.
It’s an invitation to see community not just as a backdrop to our individual lives, but as part of the very structure of our wellbeing.

Psychology and the Need for Belonging
From a psychological standpoint, community matters just as much. Numerous studies have shown that social isolation is as detrimental to health as smoking or obesity. As psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk notes in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma is often healed not only through individual therapy but through restorative relational experiences.
Even more poignantly, research by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues has shown that loneliness and weak social networks are strongly linked to increased mortality risk (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). The science is clear: we thrive in connection.

Psychosynthesis: A Psychological and Spiritual Framework
My core modality, psychosynthesis, founded by Roberto Assagioli, also recognises the central role of community. While psychosynthesis focuses on the integration of the whole self—body, feelings, mind, soul—it does not isolate the individual from the wider human field. In fact, Assagioli reminds us:
“We need a group, a communion, in which we can experience the larger life that flows through us all.”--Roberto Assagioli, The Act of Will
Assagioli spoke often about the ‘interindividual psychosynthesis’—the idea that our growth is inextricably linked to how we relate to others. Community, in this view, is not just a container for our healing—it is a mirror, a teacher, and a crucible for transformation.

Cultural Wisdom: When the Community Is Unwell
In many Indigenous and non-Western traditions, mental illness is not seen purely as a problem within the individual but as a symptom of something off-kilter within the community. For instance, in certain Indian and Indian-American spiritual frameworks, mental distress is often interpreted relationally—linked to disharmony in family, ancestral, or social relationships.

In A.K. Ramanujan’s reflections on Indian psychology and folklore, illness is frequently seen as a message or call to restore balance—not only in the individual but in the wider social or cosmological order. Similarly, anthropologist Sudhir Kakar, in works like Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors, explores how Indian healers often see psychological symptoms as disruptions in the communal or spiritual field.
What if, instead of only asking "what's wrong with this person?", we also asked: "What might this suffering be saying about the community they are part of?"

An Invitation to Reflect on Our Own Communities
In the UK today, 1 in 4 adults report experiencing mental health issues, according to the latest NHS data. While part of this can be attributed to greater awareness and diagnosis, it's also worth asking—what kind of society are we living in where so many are struggling?
Our communities are often fragmented—split along political, racial, economic, and ideological lines. Social media and the pressures of late capitalism can leave us feeling simultaneously overstimulated and alone. For many, particularly those on the margins—including queer, trans, and racialised individuals—the experience of community can be mixed, even painful.
So perhaps this Mental Health Awareness Week is more than just a call to check in with each other. It is also an invitation to ask harder questions:
•    What kinds of communities are we building?
•    Who is left out or pushed to the edges?
•    How can we participate in communities that nourish, include, and liberate?

The Way Forward: Healing Through Connection
The theme of ‘Community’ reminds us that mental health isn’t just personal—it’s political, cultural, and spiritual. And while the work of healing begins within, it must ripple outward. We need safe spaces to be witnessed, held, and celebrated. We need to know we are not alone.
As Bell Hooks wrote in All About Love:
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
Let this week be a time to not only raise awareness but raise community—and to dream into being the kinds of structures, relationships, and cultures that make true mental wellbeing possible for all.