Community And Mental Health

Community and Mental Health: Psychological Strength in Unity

Episode Transcript

This morning, I am going to be talking about the role of community in mental health.

We hear about all these things.

We hear about mental health, we hear about the importance of community and we are a community radio station, so we are the type of people saying “Yes! Let’s get together as a community, let’s do something together”.

Community and Mental Health: Vision of a Supportive Community

But I really want you just to take a moment right now and imagine a world that is like that, where you feel a deep sense of belonging, where you have the support network that lifts you up when you need it, and where you’re surrounded by people who genuinely care about your well-being.

This world exists and it can be found within the embrace of your own very own community here in the Yarra Valley.

Getting connected to your community is not just a nice to have, it’s an absolute game changer.

It can be a life-altering decision that can transform your mental health and your overall well-being and that’s why it’s so important that we talk about this.

I think it’s one of those things that we can take for granted.

We can take air for granted, for example, it’s there all the time, and we can breathe, and we don’t really think about it.

Likewise, we have this community.

We can go out to our local shops, we can hang out down the street, we can go down the pharmacy, we can go to the library, we can meet up for a coffee, we can do all these wonderful things, and I think sometimes we just take it for granted.

The community is there to support us and sometimes we don’t take it for all that it’s worth.

Kim Harris

We don’t sink our teeth into it.

It’s the same with mental health.

Mental health is something that people talk about but what is it?

How would you know if you had it?

Defining Community and Mental Health

I want to start off the show this morning by defining some of these things.

Firstly, why is community connection so crucial?

Well, we can let the facts speak for themselves.

Obviously I talk about all the touchy-feely side of community, and how that makes us feel, and how it can alleviate some of our emotional distress at times but let’s talk about the facts.

So numerous studies have shown that people with strong social connections are happier, healthier and they live longer.

According to some research published in some of the public health journals that I read, they present the fact that individuals with stronger social ties have 50% increased likelihood of surviving much longer than those who have weaker community ties. So that’s right, something as simple as being connected to your community can significantly impact your longevity and your happiness.

I mean it’s not just about living longer but it’s about enjoying your life as well.

Let’s define some of these terms because as I said we can bandy them around a little, but what does it mean and why is it such an important thing to talk about?

What is Community?

So firstly, what is community?

Community refers to a group of individuals who share common interests, and that’s something that I like to home in on in a lot. One of the workshops I do, centres around the development of your list of interests. Your interests are a linchpin to finding your passion down the line.

Your interests are phenomenally important as are your values, your goals, your geographical location, and how you interact with people on a regular basis.

This is what goes into community, so it’s all those things.

Shared Interests and Values

We’re sharing common interests, we’re sharing values, we’re sharing goals, we’re sharing a geographic area and we’re interacting with each other on a regular basis.

That’s what a community is. It involves all those things I’ve talked about on a feeling level, it involves a sense of belonging, we’ve got mutual support in the shared identity. I’m involved in a lot of community endeavours, not just Yarra Valley FM, but my local Healesville Toastmasters Club, and I created Togetherness FX as a project in partnership with Yarra Ranges Council – Grants for Community and the Community Enterprise Foundation^TM. I help local organisations and businesses engage better with their communities.

There’s a lot of great clubs in the area in the whole Yarra Valley not only like mine, a public speaking club, or a community radio station, but there are sporting clubs and then there’s men’s sheds and things like that. Lots of just great organizations that you can be involved in. And they do create this strong identity among their members which is wonderful.

Communities can also be based on various factors as I talked about.

Geographic Proximity and Social Networks

Geographic proximity, and within that you can have cultural or ethnic groups, you can have professional affiliations as well, and they often do revolve around their shared interests, so that’s why knowing what you’re interested in, is a good thing to contemplate and ponder about.

As you would know communities can take many different forms and they range from very small close-knit neighbourhoods to larger more diverse social networks.

The geographic area of the Yarra Valley is one of the largest in terms of kilometres, and our population is spread out quite a distance which does pose different types of challenges for our local community than some of the more tight-packed shires around Victoria.

Our geographic area does foster a sense of belonging because we’ve got this identity, when you live in the Yarra Valley, being in this region. We’ve got very proud long-time businesses, and little tight-knit communities within that, even with the wine growers, or the primary producers, the farmers. People, and groups of people can and do stick together.

Communities play such a vital role in shaping a sense of identity and there’s nothing like talking to someone who’s in a similar situation to you, and you can commiserate with, and you can get mutual understanding,  and you don’t really have to talk it out, you can say “Oh, I’m having one of those days” and when people can get you, because they understand the industry you’re in, or the geographic area you live in, they can understand what it’s like.

Being understood, can influence us greatly on a personal level.

The Power of Social Support: Impact of Social Connections on Well-being

This is where we get crossover of social and personal, so in a community, members of the community often engage in shared activities, and we can go to events together, and we can work towards common goals.

I have collaborated on many projects with people throughout the region here, I’ve worked with our own very own Yarra Valley FM presenters, Cora Zon and Bruce Argyle. We’ve worked on the Art of Speech project together; it involved an international comedy event.

Now Bruce and I are working with Yarra Valley FM, we’ve both joined the committee here and we’ve been helping with working on the relocation projects, for the relocation of the station here.

I must admit it’s wonderful to be able to celebrate the achievements that we’ve had individually and collectively over the time I’ve known Bruce and Cora, and I really value those relationships and the developing relationships I’m finding with other members of these tiny communities within the community.

We even have a little community within community radio.

Kim Harris

There’s lots in there, and that’s the concept of community.

Community: A Support System during Challenging Times

It’s very dynamic and it evolves over time, and I guess that’s what I want to leave you with, when in this discussion of what community is.

Community it is shaped by the interactions and the relationships you have, those shared experiences that you have, within the group of people that are involved, that’s why it can be diverse. You can have a strong sense of community, and shared social support that can lead on to positive impacts, not only for you but for others as well.

It can develop your resilience when things are a bit tougher.

When we’ve got people that we can connect with, we can share resources and there’s this idea of increasing our “social capital” as well.

It’s the idea of investing your relationships for some sort of gain, and you get a lot of gains from being connected in a community.

Who doesn’t prefer to work on a challenge with someone? A problem shared is a problem halved they say.

Kim Harris

We want to set goals together and work towards things together because it really does help. I hope I have sold you on the case, of why community connection is so crucial and what community means.

More expanded details on things you might already know.

I’d like to get into some uncharted territory in today’s episode.

I want to talk about how to achieve community, and how can we promote that to people, especially if we’re a bit of a homebody, or a bit more on the reclusive, introverted end of the scale.

Maybe we’ve been taking community for granted, and we need to start getting back out there and connecting with others.

So, I’m going to be talking about some of the challenges of getting involved in a community, and I hope to give you some tips and tricks to get you out and about.

Let’s play a song. This song is Matchbox 20 “Bright Lights”.

Understanding Mental Health

I’m talking all about the power of togetherness and belonging this season.

Today I’m focusing in on the role of community in mental health.

In previous episodes, I’ve been unpacking this idea of togetherness and belonging and some of the feelings and thoughts that come out of it.

We’ve talked about the neuroscience of all of this as well, so what’s happening to you on a biological level, a psychological level, and I’m wanting to educate the community on how vital and crucial it is to have community connections.

It’s not about the quantity of connections, it’s more about the quality.

The quality is what matters, as is true, in so many things in life.

When you’re actively engaged in your community you have the opportunity to cultivate very deep and meaningful relationships and these relationships can provide a crucial support system during challenging times.

It’s also good during good times as well! To have someone to laugh with,  and reminisce with and get up to crazy adventures with. These types of relationships are great no matter what the weather is and talking about the weather we’re currently at 11 degrees today we’re expecting a top of about 15 so that should help you if you are getting ready to go outside!

Let’s get back to this topic.

Another definition that might be useful, because it’s one of those things that people talk about, but I don’t believe is well defined, mental health.

What is mental health?

What constitutes good mental health?

Mental health refers to a person’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being.

It has three aspects.

Three Aspects of Mental Health: Emotions, Psychology, Social Well-being

Emotions

Emotions. Emotions are a very interesting subject to talk about, and I could probably talk about that for hours alone. The role of emotions, and I do believe personally that emotions are like the weather, they come and go and the more that we can learn to just appreciate the weather for what it is, and let it come and go as it will, it’s a good thing to start to learn how to work with your emotions.

Emotions are not under our conscious control, we don’t consciously create them, they’re created from our body at a biological level. It’s almost like an early warning system, so when we get good at understanding the signals from our emotions, we can make a great impact in the quality of our lives.

We’re not going against what’s naturally there, we are going with it, and learning to flow with what is happening. That’s a good thing for conserving energy.

Psychology/Mindset

Psychology our psychological aspects are also interesting. I find it fascinating because as human beings we have biology, which is what I was just talking about with emotions and where they come from, but psychology is where we can use our minds to think, and think with conscious awareness about what is happening, and this sets us apart from some of the other creatures that roam around the world.

We do have biology and instinct which is very similar to other animals, but humans have psychology. We have the ability to go against our instinct, to go against our biology, which has all different types of consequences, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

The fact that we have a psychological component of our mental health I think is an interesting one.

Social Well-being

The third aspect, the third leg of the mental health triad, is social well-being.

We are social animals, and we can’t achieve anything without other people.

I find this is true, even with change in general.

When we are talking about this whole topic, even getting out in your community, now if you are a bit reclusive, then that’s a significant change to start to get out and improve my social capital and expand my social circles, my social networks and increase my social capital.

That can be a significant change for some people, and we can’t achieve this change on our own.

The First Change is in the Mind

We change fundamentally, in our thoughts first. We might think “Oh, I really should see my friendship group” or “I really want to get back out in the community” I can see that being in my own little world, in my own little universe, where I’m not getting any additions to my life, that are you helping me feel good.

We first think about that, very fundamentally, within our own mind.

The first change is always in the mind. We first change there, but then to enact the change, and to help the change become permanent, and to integrate the change, it always requires other people.

We can be very instrumental and very helpful toward each other when we are working on different types of changes, and this is why community and that social aspect, is something I talk about a lot, because I know how important it is.

The Myth of “Self-Made” People

I think people can get false messages from the world, and media, and things. You get people claiming, they are successful, claiming “I’m self-made”, but it doesn’t exist. It’s a complete myth and an incomplete story.

Everybody needs somebody. Don’t believe otherwise. Trillionaires aren’t trillionaires without people handing over their hard-earned dollars. We all rely on each other.

Understanding Mental Health: Emotional, Psychological, and Social Well-being

Mental health has those three aspects, emotions, thinking, and social well-being.

It encompasses how you think, how you feel, and how relate to other people. It encompasses, how you behave, as well as how you cope with stress, how we’re making choices.

Our behaviour, what we’re choosing to act on, is helpful to understand, to learn to cope with stress.

We want these things to help us in a healthy way, so mental health is a vital component of our overall health.

Mental Health plays a significant role in every stage of life from childhood to adolescence, through to adulthood.

Kim Harris

I have watched this and observed this with my own children. I have eight kids and my eldest is now 25 so I’ve seen him go from child, adolescent, into adulthood. I’m watching my youngest now he’s 11 going into his teen years.

Mental health gets talked about a lot about, and we know it’s important,

if you know what it is, you know why.

Now that I’ve defined this idea of what community is, what mental health is, I want to connect the ideas of community and mental health together. I want to give some useful tips on how you can go about improving your mental health, and improving your sense of belonging, in your own community.

We’ll talk about some of the challenges of that too, but before I do let’s play another song this one’s Powder Finger, “Passenger”.

The Role of Community in Mental Wellness and Healing

We’ve been talking about the role of community in mental health.

This is connected.

Social support can be a catalyst not only for mental wellness, but also by connecting to the community you can embark upon your own healing journey.

Community and healing are sometimes intricately connected as well.

Kim Harris

I’ve seen this happen many times in the different social groups that I’m a part of.

A Story of Change: Community Can Help with Healing from Depression

I remember people coming and going from different clubs that I’ve been involved in, and there’s one lady who had been silently battling depression for many years and this is why I chose that last song, because I’ve heard depression called someone’s “dark passenger”.

Something that’s there with you, and sometimes it helps you makes you feel very isolated. It cuts you off from others and you can feel very overwhelmed and oppressed by its presence. You’re accompanied by a depressed type of mood or feeling. And despite your best efforts to cope, when you’re in that darker space, you feel trapped in that darkness, and you don’t know how to really get out of it.

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years, the decades I’ve been involved in community groups, is you to get these people that just come in and it is literally like they’re stepping out of the darkness and into the sunshine.

You watch them start slowly to come back to life.

Kim Harris

As they become more and more engaged in the little community group, they start to engage with the buzz of activity, they decide each time they participate, to go that little bit further, I can explore this a little bit more, and as they enter into the activities of the group, depends on what group and why they’re meeting, you often find these groups of passionate people, it could be a gardening group, it could be like mine, a public speaking group, it doesn’t really matter there’s kind of this camaraderie and this sharing of laughter and stories that goes on there.

This lady, she just slowly, slowly, slowly, came out of her shell. Eventually, she mustered the courage to start to talk about her depression, and discovered there were a lot of people around that felt just like she did. She found a little home where she could share her struggles and pour out her heart. It connected her to the group.

It helped her to heal. It helped her to overcome some of that darkness that she’d been struggling with.

Kim Harris

As we learned to listen to her more, and provide her that empathetic space, where she could share herself and her feelings, she found a little sanctuary, where she could find solace, support, and a sense of purpose.

She went on to talk about her struggles and inspire other people to get help. She inspired other people to join the group, and would warmly welcome people, after she got over to the other side of her depression and into more the healing side of it.

Understanding that those deep connections and the profound sharing of struggles was the thing that connected her to others she found some resilience that had been missing.

Understanding Collective Resilience

On that note, I should talk a little bit about resilience because again it’s one of those things that gets bandied around.

Just quickly, I’ll leave you with the idea of collective resilience.

It’s one thing to be resilient in and of yourself, but how do we find and connect with collective resilience? How do we find that community resilience, and what does that mean?

Collective Resilience Defined

It refers to the ability of a group or community to withstand and recover from adversity or challenging circumstances.

It goes beyond what one person experiences and encompasses the whole collective strength and resources and the capacity of a community to adapt, bounce back, and thrive in the face of a hardship.

The Five Elements of Collective Resilience

There are five elements to how collective resilience outcomes about, and those five are:

Number one we share a purpose.

Shared Purpose and Social Support

Number two we have that social support network built into what we’re doing, we do collaborative problem solving, we put the problem on the table, and we all bring our ideas and think about how we can address this.

The Mobilisation of Resources

Number three we mobilise. Based on that thinking, we mobilize our resources too, because you often find different people with different strengths within groups that can take on different aspects, and so we’re mobilizing in the best way to use our available resources, and so that’s number three.

Adaptive Capacity

Number four we have an adaptive capacity, so that’s where we understand that if we are going to be collectively resilient, that we need to be adaptable and flexible. When we’ve got other people, with different personalities in the group, our differences can be a great strength, and can help us adapt, because we’re all seeing it slightly from a different perspective. It’s important to be open-minded there to embrace those innovations and embrace the changes and embrace those new approaches or the different perspectives that each other have.

Empowerment to Participate

The final fifth one is the empowerment in the participation. Once we’ve connected, and we’re listening, and we’re creating solutions for our problems together, and we’re looking at all our strengths and we’re being open to different ways of doing things, then we can feel really empowered and perhaps ready to participate and engage in the problem-solving process.

They are some of the key elements of collective resilience and something worth aspiring to in whichever group community group you are involved in.

In Conclusion

In today’s episode, we’ve delved into the transformative power of community in fostering mental health and resilience.

From defining the essence of community to exploring the intricate connection between individual and collective healing, we’ve witnessed how meaningful connections can change lives.

As we navigate through life’s challenges and triumphs, let us remember that we are never alone – our communities stand ready to support, uplift, and empower us.

So, whether you’re seeking solace, connection, or simply a shared laugh, remember that your community is here for you.

Join us next time as we continue our journey towards togetherness and resilience on ‘Stories of Change’. Until then, let’s embrace the power of community and stand strong together.

Until next week, take care of yourselves and of each other.