Mental Health Awareness Week 2025

Mental Health Awareness Week 2025 runs from 12^th -18^th May and this year’s theme is ‘Community’: a core value at the heart of everything that we do at OUR Generation.

As a cross-border partnership of nine organisations, we’re building peace and reconciliation through youth mental health and wellbeing programmes across Northern Ireland and the border regions of Ireland. We work with children, young people, grassroots community organisations, schools and youth workers to create a lasting, positive impact.

We believe that positive mental health grows with connection. That’s why this week we’re spotlighting the OUR Generation community through our ‘Meet the Team’ social media series and highlighting the work of some of our partner organisations. Follow us on social to learn more!

Why Community Matters

According to the Mental Health Foundation, the benefits of community are that it: “increases connection, promotes a sense of belonging, reduces isolation and reduces loneliness.” [¹]

The old proverb: ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ perfectly emphasizes the importance of community and collective responsibility when it comes to how young people form their values and beliefs.

Communities are groups of people who share something in common or have a sense of shared identity with other group members. Our social identities are shaped by our communities and the social groups we belong to: our families, schools, sports teams, cultural backgrounds and friendship circles. Belonging to these groups can offer connection, support, and purpose, but can sometimes lead us to make assumptions about others which may not be true.

To address this, OUR Generation programmes are underpinned by the theory of ‘Social Identity Perspective’ which can be thought of as a kind of lens through which we view the world.  To understand this concept better, we asked Dr Jessica Cherry, Research Associate in Social Psychology at Ulster University, to explain. She’s one of the researchers involved in ensuring we incorporate the 3 key elements of social identity perspective into our programmes. These are: ‘Social Identity Complexity, Multiple Group Membership and Intergroup Dynamics. She said:

“Using the intergroup method, the aim isn’t to change how young people see themselves, but to build an understanding of group differences. Rather than encouraging everyone to think the same, the approach is to challenge assumptions and move away from black and white thinking.”

Building programmes around these indicators, she said, will help young people to understand social identity to “create a society that is more open to learning about others.” She added:

“Research shows that when young people see their own groups as diverse, they become more trusting and feel less threatened by ‘outgroups’ (groups that they don’t belong to). This reduction in threat and increase in trust is essential for co-operation between groups, which is key for peacebuilding.”

Being members of multiple social groups enables young people to form a better understanding of others and feel more connected, but there is also evidence that it has a positive effect on “improved emotional wellbeing” [²] and “mental and physical resilience”[³] even helping to prevent anxiety and depression in young people.

We know that when young people are mentally and physically healthy, they’re better able to contribute to a peaceful, thriving society and in turn, a healthy society benefits everyone. When young people understand who they are and how they belong, they will be more confident, compassionate and resilient; growing up better, together.

Dr Jessica Cherry from Ulster University

References:

1. www.mentalhealth.org.uk
2. Bimming et al. 2009; Jetten et al, 2010
3. Jones & Jetten, 2011

Further information on Social Identity Theory can be found here: www.simplypsychology.org