Belonging to Your Communities during Mental Health Awareness Week and into 2025
Did you know it’s Mental Health Awareness Week?
This national event was inspired by the Mental Health Foundation. They have grown significantly in recent years, with a clear mission: to raise awareness of mental health and help people understand how to better support themselves and those around them.
Do you think that is an important theme? Life is stressful, just look at the news, both inside and outside the UK. According to a recent BetterHelp survey, 35% of UK adults worry they’ll be judged for seeking professional mental health support. Meanwhile, 25% fear doing so might affect their job prospects. That’s a tough environment for anyone to thrive in.
We talk a lot about physical health, but mental health is just as important. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has stated: “We urgently need more funding for mental health research. If we’re serious about treating mental and physical health equally, funding for mental health research needs to increase exponentially.”
Each May, “Mental Health Awareness Week” focuses on a national theme to encourage shared understanding and support. In recent years, they have explored themes like ‘loneliness’, ‘anxiety’, and ‘movement for our mental health’. The 2025 theme is especially relevant to the legal sector: ‘Community’. It is so relevant and is a positive theme to get interest.
But what does ‘community’ really mean?
According to Oxford Languages, a community is “a group of people living or working in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.”
From an evolutionary point of view, we are social animals, tribal, even. We survived by working together to avoid danger. And while the threats today may be less physical (though I did hit a deer on the road near my home recently), our brains still crave connection. I have to continuously connect and re-connect with communities in my work life.
Our minds are wired to seek safety through others. As author and sports performance coach Owen Eastwood puts it in Belonging:
“We are tribal. Belonging is the bedrock of trust, and trust delivers performance.”
That sense of connection, the trust we feel with colleagues, clients, friends, and family, isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of good mental health.
LawNet is a perfect example of community in action. Just look at the six aspects of the network featured on its homepage, each creating space for people to belong, and more. The firms you represent, the suppliers you trust, the clients you serve, the family and friends in your corner. That’s your community.
Through my work at Melville Mental Solutions, I’ve had the privilege of supporting LawNet members by delivering talks and training new MHFAiders® (Mental Health First Aiders) through MHFA England. I’ve had meaningful conversations with members across firms, and I’ve seen first-hand the power of community to support mental health—not just in principle, but in practice.
So, as we mark Mental Health Awareness Week, I invite you to pause.
Reflect on where you feel a sense of belonging.
Consider how you might strengthen that community, whether it’s checking in with a colleague, offering your time to support someone else, or simply saying a sincere “thank you.”
And if you already do those things ‘well done’. It’s those small, prosocial acts that keep us connected.
If you’d like to continue the conversation or explore ways I can support your community, feel free to get in touch: patrick@melville-solutions.com.
Wishing you and your community a positive and healthy week.
About Melville Mental Health
Melville Mental Solutions (MMS) are a LawNet Preferred Supplier with a mission to normalise the theme of mental health. Founder Patrick Melville drives this by guiding and inspiring any staff member to be curious about their minds and how to manage their mental fitness in these demanding legal and social times.
MMS has worked with over 7,000 people in the UK and other countries. Visit the MMS website here.
