The importance of mental wellbeing—especially now [preventioninstitute.org]

New toolkit shares community-led strategies for creating social connection

Five years ago, a diverse group of community-based coalitions rooted in neighborhoods throughout the country began to explore how they might better support mental health and wellbeing for boys and men of color and for military service members, veterans, and their families. With support from Prevention Institute and funding from Movember, coalitions from cities like Honolulu, Boston, and New Orleans and rural areas in states like South Carolina and Nebraska took on the work of transforming their communities as part of the Making Connections for Mental Wellbeing initiative.

At a time when people and entire communities throughout the country are experiencing intensified social isolation because of the coronavirus pandemic, the types of community-based solutions that were developed through the Making Connections initiative could provide a much-needed respite. That’s why we’re so pleased to be able to present them in the new Making Connections Backpack, a toolkit filled with strategies and lessons learned from five years of the Making Connections initiative.

The Making Connections Backpack is a comprehensive guide to creating gender- and culture-relevant community-level approaches to improving mental health and wellbeing.

It features:

• Strategies for building community capacity and resilience that were developed by the Making Connections community coalitions, such as creating shared spaces, advocating for policy change, supporting civic and community engagement, and others
• Core principles and values to guide community-level mental health approaches such as equity, treating culture as a lens and asset, shoulder-to-shoulder actions among peers, a focus on upstream prevention, and prioritizing the “pillars of wellbeing,” among others.
• Tips for changing the narrative about men and boys’ mental health and resilience and sharing narratives that encourage healing and hopefulness
• A packing list of tools and frameworks that can support the planning and implementation of community-level mental health initiatives
• An explanation of how to plan and measure the success of community-based initiatives like Making Connections as well as a description of common challenges and solutions for overcoming those challenges.
• Stories from the Making Connections coalitions about what problems their communities faced, what solutions they tried to improve mental wellbeing, what worked well, and what didn’t.

The results of the Making Connections initiative have been truly inspiring. We’ve seen young men of color step up as respected community leaders, successfully advocating for improvements like bike paths and community gardens. We’ve watched veterans transform how health systems and the larger community understand and support them and their families. We’ve witnessed the men and boys who have engaged in this work forge life-changing connections with one another and with their communities.

We hope the Making Connections Backpack will help this work continue and grow, both in the Making Connections communities and in other communities seeking to create opportunities and spaces to move from trauma to resilience.

Changing community conditions CAN create hope and wellbeing among men and boys.

Photo credit: Together for Brothers

[Please click here to access the toolkit.]