Mental Health Awareness Week: Communities as the Heart of Collective Wellness
Before we start let's take a moment and acknowledge and grieve for all the communities greatly impacted by the injustices present in our world right now, both done out loud and in silence:
No one is free until we are all free: Toitū Te Tiriti, Free Palestine, Free Kanaky, Free Congo, Free Hawaii, Free Kashmir, Free Sudan and any community and peoples unable to live freely under oppression systems of violence. Mental Hauora needs safety and recognise that is a privilege that many do not have. Mental Wellness is a human right
Mental Health Week serves as a poignant reminder of the value of mind wellness within the broader context of hauora. This year’s theme, “Community is… what we create together”, invites us to reflect on the various forms community can take. Whether rooted in place, kaupapa, whakapapa, identity, or shared interests, community is something we actively build and nurture—not merely something we inherit.
Community can empower and connect us, but it can also serve as a means of categorisation or generalisation. In times of scarcity, we must ask ourselves: How do we choose community? What hinders us from building or resourcing it? When systems and mindsets limit us, returning to the core of our relationships becomes essential.
“If You Want to Change the World, Start with Relationships”
Do we truly know our communities? Community extends beyond those who show up for celebrations. For many who’ve navigated the grind of survival, it encompasses mutual aid, peer support, and being present for both the mundane and the messy aspects of life. Collective accountability reminds us that our survival hinges on the strength of our relationships—not just the strength of our individual selves.
The African Proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” is not just a cliché; it’s a vital truth applicable to our collective wellbeing. Mental health is not solely an individual pursuit; it’s about cultivating our collective capacity for resilience, support, and mobilisation. It’s about communities coming together through peer support networks, reconciliation, reparations, and mutual aid. These practices not only help us meet our material needs but also increase our capacity to sit with the messiness of healing in our relationships. This is the heart of community care: creating spaces for truth, reconciliation, and healing.
Communities capable of weathering crises while remaining grounded in love, care, and reciprocity are essential for fostering mental well-being.
In our capitalist society, both community and self-care have been stripped of their authentic roots and reimagined as commodities. We are marketed a version of self-care that promotes consumption and avoidance rather than genuine collective care. This Mental Health Week, we must remember that true self-care and community care are acts of resistance against systems that encourage isolation.
“Self-care isn’t a luxury; it’s a vital technique for self-empowerment in the ongoing fight against social injustices.”
- The Center for Community Solutions
Initially, "self-care" emerged within healthcare to support those experiencing mental distress or requiring long-term care. However, during the Civil Rights movement, it transformed into a powerful political act of resistance. The Black Panthers, for instance, developed programmes centred on fun, creativity, and hauora, using these initiatives as essential coping mechanisms amid police brutality and systemic oppression.
In her manifesto, Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey reflects on the women in her life —active community organisers—who prioritised naps to recharge. These moments allowed her to survive, hope, dream, and act. Through rest, she grounded herself, affirming that she existed not merely for labour but for connection.
“Resting is the beginning of the undoing of trauma, allowing us to return to our state of being… Rest is a physical and psychological disruption; it is simply being.”
-Tricia Hersey
Recognising the urgent need to disrupt collective energetic exploitation, we affirm that care and connection are central to wellness. Rest is essential for our well-being; it empowers us to resist and transform, fostering a better world. By investing in community-based care, rest, and relationships, we can break cycles of violence, poverty, incarceration, and homelessness. Intentionally cultivated communities become spaces of healing and accountability, capable of changing lives—sometimes even saving them.
Yet, we must acknowledge that communities require effort. They are not passive structures but demand investment, vulnerability, and a commitment to reciprocity. Healthy communities foster healthy individuals, who in turn nurture robust systems. This reciprocity shows up in many forms: mutual aid networks providing essential resources to those in need, community organising efforts that redistribute power, and reconciliation processes that seek to repair harm and build accountability. These are tangible expressions of community care—messy, imperfect, but vital.
Community is not just an ideal to romanticise; it’s an active practice. It requires continuous effort, vulnerability, and mutual support. It’s about being present not only for celebrations but also for the mundane, messy, and challenging moments. In a world that often prioritises individual achievement, we must remember that collectivism, particularly in times of scarcity, is our strength. It serves as an antidote to the isolation perpetuated by oppressive systems.
Mental health is intrinsically linked to power, privilege, oppression, and liberation. Our systems—housing, welfare, health, education—play pivotal roles in our mental well-being.
Let’s be clear:
A liveable income is mental wellness.
Safe, secure housing is mental wellness.
Food security and sovereignty are mental wellness.
Land back is mental wellness.
Tino Rangatiratanga is mental wellness.
Gender-affirming care is mental wellness.
Human rights are mental wellness.
To focus solely on individual healing without acknowledging these broader social determinants misses the bigger picture. Mental health extends beyond the individual experiences; it encompasses how systemic oppression impacts us at every level. By dismantling oppressive systems and building communities rooted in equity and justice, we create the conditions for true mental wellness for all.
Community involves not just support but also accountability. Relational accountability means showing up for one another in ways that heal, not harm. It requires unlearning toxic patterns of shame, isolation, hyper-productivity, and individualism.
When we discuss mental health, we need to broaden the conversation to include how communities can hold one another accountable in ways that do not replicate punitive systems. Embracing restorative and indigenous approaches grounded in healing and care allows us to show up for one another in solidarity rather than judgment.
We must remain vigilant about how trauma has been commodified. In a world that profits from pain, trauma becomes a resource to be exploited rather than healed. The wellness industry has co-opted mental health narratives, offering solutions that overlook the systemic roots of suffering. True healing emerges from connection, not consumption. It’s not about individual fixes but about collective transformation.
In crises, we often turn to avoidance, self-soothing, or coping behaviours, mistaking them for self-care. However, avoidance is frequently a response to overwhelming systemic injustice. We cannot weaponise mental health to sidestep these uncomfortable truths. Disconnection is not the answer. We must strive to remain in relationship with one another, especially when faced with difficult realities.
Current models of mental health care often centre individualism, isolating us and fostering an isolating sense of personal responsibility for our struggles. As we celebrate Mental Health Week, let’s remind ourselves that true mental wellness is about liberation and collective care. We must unlearn the notion that we have to face our challenges alone or that healing is solely an individual endeavour.
Communities are not just spaces for celebration; they are vital for supporting us through hardship, challenging us to grow, and mobilising us to create the world we envision. They are spaces of mutual aid, relational accountability, and radical care—where we meet each other’s needs, hold space for each other’s healing, and organise for change.
True communities are devoid of the systems that decide who is worthy of care and who is not. In these spaces, everyone is embraced—whether we’re showing up for celebrations or in our most vulnerable moments. This understanding reinforces that within nature and our collective, we can create and mobilise wellness. However, we must be willing to invest in it, not just benefit from it.
My first sense of community outside of my whanau and my work whanau when I was younger was the New Zealand gaming and streaming community. It was here that I first witnessed the power of what could be built when people invest in one another and create together. We organized events, collaborations, and had countless all-night conversations. For many of us, these moments were life-changing, often shared online as some of the most meaningful and transformative experiences making life-long friendships. They saw me as me, in my weirdness and celebrated it and that soil, I felt my ideas and hopes were legitimate.
Yet, what is often left unspoken are the individuals behind the scenes (myself included)—the ones who resource the community, create structure, and offer manaaki (support), kai (food), fun, ideas, and routines. These people are the backbone of the community, frequently receiving little in return. In the gaming space, community creation can go in two directions: some thrive while giving minimal recognition to those doing the community building work, while others struggle to identify with the community itself and instead seek followership, often hurting or breaking community in the process.
Its ok to be honest if the concept of community is new or has not yet been accessible to us. For many it was an essential mechanism of survivorship but more than ever before we give you radical permission to foster or curate your community and build relationships that show up in ways the mutually nourish you. Sometime that includes resetting and reviewing our own relationships and dynamics to address this, a constant state of becoming.
True community requires reciprocity not always immediately but in flow, in time. Been given the privilege to serve and support, and to be served and supported. We need to be ok with this flow, especially for people pleasers or over givers, we to prevent conditions for community to thrive. It should not perpetuate the sacrifice of a few—often women and BIPOC members—for the benefit of the many. Building a strong, healthy community is a deliberate choice, one that must be nourished, upheld, and decentralised so that everyone feels empowered to contribute in their own unique ways.
I want to take a moment to shout out this gaming whānau, as well as the many others who have helped shape me into a community leader, manager, and connector. They have opened my eyes to the often unrecognised labour that goes into building and sustaining a community, and the importance of ensuring wellness is accessible to all who take part in it.
This Mental Health Week, let’s commit to building communities that affirm life, grounded in reciprocity, where our collective capacity is prioritised. Let’s invest in communities that heal, relationships that nourish, and systems that support everyone’s mental well-being. Through conversation, expectation, rest and collective action, we can build a world that honours and resources our hauora, one where no one is left behind.
