Our 4 week programme explores how a just and connected community can withstand adversities and catastrophes, no matter the source. Grounded in these Five Foundational Protective Factors for Building Universal Mental Wellness & Transformational Resilience, this series of workshops brings together people working at the intersection of climate and other disaster preparedness and mental health in communities across Scotland.We hear more and more that mental ill health is a crisis. Another crisis. And how can it not be? In this poly crisis, there is progressively less room to be calm . Many people live with past and ongoing trauma, and will face new catastrophes carrying all of that with them. We know that:

'Climate change is negatively affecting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of people around the world. The literature shows that:

There is a clear relationship between increased temperatures and number of suicides;
There is clear evidence for severe distress following extreme weather events;
People who meet criteria for mental illness are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change on physical as well as mental health;

These impacts:

Will get worse without meaningful interventions, driving and exacerbating health and social inequalities which themselves worsen mental health.' Grantham Institute Briefing Paper Imperial College, 2021

So what conditions make it more likely that a community can respond to challenges with resilience, perhaps even growing more resilient when disasters strike? We don’t have the capacity to deal with this with individual counselling and psychotherapy sessions - and perhaps never will. To truly support community-wide well-being, we need shared tools, better relationships and local response systems that allow us to prepare and heal together. Leaving nobody behind. Connected communities can help us withstand shocks and knock-on effects to our collective mental, emotional and physical health.

When: Over 4 Tuesdays in September, 10am-12pm on 9, 16, 23 & 30 September

In this programme:

You’ll be taking a deep dive with people across different sectors who are committed to fostering just, healthy, and thriving communities.
We’ll provide fresh concepts of using a public health approach to the climate crisis to processing and lessening the impacts of traumatic events
We’ll share tools for self and co-regulation, for finding meaning and purpose in an increasingly challenging world , as well as giving us all the time and space to make new connections.
We will hear from several different speakers in each session to give shape and form to this vision
You’ll be invited to bring your ideas, your experiences and your questions.

Community is medicine, and by building relationships and structures rooted in care and equity, we can create the conditions for much more than collective survival.

Who is this for?Whether you are approaching this from a mental health, well-being, nature connection, poverty, injustice, equity, health, climate action, climate psychology, climate adaptation, or another angle, we invite you to bring your piece of the puzzle to these sessions so we can see the wider picture of resilience work across Scotland.

This programme is funded by the National Lottery Awards for All Scotland. We would like to thank the players of the national lottery.

the image for this event is from an ebook designed by Krizel Sagun, MS and Laura Braden: EBOOK: Trauma-Informed Advocacy

Community is Medicine