Why Communities Should Participate in the Race to Resilience

Record June heat in the Northeast of the U.S. and historic wildfires in the Southwest. Scorching temperatures in India, parts of North Africa, and Southeast Asia. The global climate-ecosystem-biodiversity (C-E-B) crisis is escalating. Every community must rapidly build resilience to prevent harm and enhance recovery. The UN High-Level Climate Champion Race to Resilience campaign seeks to help communities accomplish this. Cities and towns throughout the U.S. and worldwide should consider participating in the campaign.

Launched in 2021, the Race to Resilience supports locally-led resilience-building initiatives. The campaign’s primary focus so far has been to strengthen external physical resilience within agricultural, marine freshwater, forest, and other ecological systems. Enhancing resilient housing, transportation, and other types of infrastructure, as well as food systems, engaging youth, and securing financing are some of the other focuses.

The Race to Resilience campaign is now expanding to include building social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral resilience in communities. This is important because strengthening human resilience will complement the focus on external resilience and boost the capacity of community members to remain mentally healthy and resilient during ongoing stresses, emergencies, and disasters.

Why Is Building Population-Level Mental Wellness and Resilience Vital?

The C-E-B crisis is an unprecedented event that will produce radically more expansive and different types of toxic stresses and traumas than have existed for most of human history.

Unless explicit actions are taken to strengthen everyone’s capacity to remain mentally well and resilient during adversities, they may cause many people to try to mollify their distress with alcohol, drugs, or other methods that cause self-harm and injury to others. Many people may also turn their angst outward and become aggressive or violent towards people who look, think, or act differently.

These reactions could undermine the safety, health, and well-being of individuals, families, communities, and entire societies. They could also reduce everyone’s capacity to adapt to the impacts of the C-E-B crisis and make solutions even more difficult to implement.

To prevent these harmful psychosocial reactions and heal those that occur, communities in the U.S. and worldwide need to expand beyond individualized mental health services to embrace a public health approach and build population-level mental wellness and resilience.

The Call to Embrace a Public Health Approach to Mental Health Has Been Made for Decades

“This report strongly advocates the need to shift the focus of mental health.” First, it needs to be “….brought out from professional, organizational, and political isolation into the broader sphere of public health.” “...Second, instead of concentrating on mental health at the level of individuals, we need to strengthen the population-level mental health approach.” Third...“Instead of looking only at the negative side of mental health, contemporary thinking and actions must draw attention to positive mental health.”

This is from the Executive Summary of the Public Health Approach on Mental Health in Europe published back in 2000. It documents that the call to expand beyond individualized approaches to embrace a public health approach to mental health is not new.

Twenty years later, the plea is still being made.

“There is growing recognition in the fields of public health and mental health services research that the provision of clinical services to individuals is not a viable approach to meeting the mental health needs of a population.”

This quote is from an excellent 2020 article by Dr. Jonathan Purtle and co-authors titled “Population-Based Approaches to Mental Health: History, Strategies, and Evidence.” It also underscores the need to expand beyond individualized treatments to a public health approach to address societal-level traumas.

Despite these and many other calls for change, individualized clinical services remain dominant. However, there is zero chance of preventing or healing the widespread distress and traumas speeding our way due to the global C-E-B crisis. Only a public health approach to mental wellness and resilience can accomplish this.

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Elements of a Population-Based Public Health Approach to Mental Wellness and Resilience

A population-based public health approach to mental wellness and resilience is most effective when applied in the neighborhoods or communities where people live, work, and recreate.

It focuses on the entire population—all adults, adolescents, and young children in the community. This includes people deemed more at-risk and those with symptoms of mental health struggles. Fully engaging these groups with other residents avoids the stigmatization and siloing that often results when they are isolated from others.

The top priority of a public health approach is to prevent mental health and psychosocial problems. Methods to help people heal when they experience struggles are fully integrated into the prevention strategies. They are not addressed separately.

These goals are accomplished by actively engaging residents in developing strategies that strengthen existing protective factors and form additional ones. These are local assets and resources that buffer people from and help them push back against traumatic stressors and use them as catalysts to find constructive new sources of meaning, purpose, and hope in life.

As seen in the many communities in the U.S. and elsewhere already using this approach, each emphasizes different protective factors. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. But some of the common ones include:

• Building robust social connections and supports throughout the community. These relationships help overcome the toxic social isolation and loneliness that is so prevalent today. They also provide the practical assistance and emotional support people need during and long after emergencies and disasters to remain healthy and resilient.
• Engaging everyone in prosocial activities. This can include assisting other residents in need, caring for animals, or creating healthy, just, zero-emission, climate-resilient local housing and infrastructure, businesses, and ecological conditions. Sharing, cooperating, and enhancing the conditions of their community provides residents with positive sources of meaning and purpose during difficult times.
• Help all residents become trauma- and resilience-informed. This involves teaching them how traumatic stresses can activate fight-or-flight reactions that, when unreleased, can cause them to harm themselves or others. It also involves teaching simple age-appropriate emotional self-regulation skills and methods to use adversities as catalysts to learn, grow, and find new meaning and purpose in them.
• Providing ongoing group and community-minded opportunities for residents to share their distress and hear how others are dealing with similar struggles in safe and supportive settings facilitated by trained peers.

Community leaders throughout the U.S. and internationally will find significant benefits by building their residents’ capacity for mental wellness and resilience, as they also strengthen external physical resilience. Participating in the Race to Resilience campaign can be an effective way to accomplish this.