A strong community to boost your mental health

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week (12 - 18 May), and this year is highlighting the importance of community, the people around us who help us feel connected, supported, and understood.  

Your community might include family, neighbours,  friends, colleagues, or anyone you interact with regularly. 

Creating and maintaining good connections and relationships with others can have a powerful impact on your wellbeing. They can help to reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation and have been shown to improve people’s mental health by lowering stress and anxiety. People who have strong connections are often happier, more resilient and can live longer, healthier lives - both physically and mentally. . 

An estimated one in four people in the UK experiences a mental health problem each year,  –  with anxiety and depression being among the most common. 

Your community provides a sense of belonging, love and support, which can be vital in helping you to overcome any challenges that you encounter in your life. 

There’s a chain reaction of positive effects too, as lowering your stress and anxiety levels can boost your immune system and make you more able to fight off or overcome illness and infection. 

Relationships with those around you need to be nurtured to keep them strong so, this Mental Health Awareness Week, think about the relationships you have, how active and healthy they are and how good they make you feel. 

If you’re feeling lonely, or your relationships aren’t providing the benefits you’d like them to or that they used to, you’ll find information and advice on the NHS Every Mind Matters website. There are tips on how to build healthy relationships with yourself and others, as well as managing difficulties within relationships.