World Mental Health Day 2025: Why Connection Matters for Lived Experience

LEA
Oct 9
4 min read

Tomorrow marks World Mental Health Day, and this year brings two important themes into focus. Internationally, we're recognising mental health in humanitarian emergencies - acknowledging the profound impact of crisis, displacement, and trauma on mental wellbeing, while also not forgetting the challenges Australia faces. With drought, floods, fires, cumulative disasters, we can't underestimate the importance of addressing these for both people who experience them and those who are first responders. We support the work of the Black Dog Institute in creating the National Emergency Worker Support Service for emergency workers and volunteers.

In Australia for World Mental Health Month, Australia is centering our attention on something equally vital: connecting with your community. For those of us with lived experience of mental health challenges - whether as consumers, carers, family members, or kin - connection isn't just a nice theme to talk about during October. It's often what makes the difference between struggling alone and finding a way through.

Connection Beyond the Clichés

We've all heard the advice: reach out, stay connected, don't isolate. And while it's well-meaning, it can feel hollow when you're in the thick of a mental health challenge. Connection isn't always comfortable. It requires vulnerability, and that's genuinely hard when you're already feeling fragile.

But here's what lived experience teaches us: connection doesn't have to look like what we see in the wellness posts with perfect friend groups and sunset beach walks. Sometimes connection is a text message you didn't have the energy to send but did anyway. Sometimes it's the GP who remembers your name. Sometimes it's the online community where you don't have to explain yourself because they already get it.

What Makes Connection Meaningful

The World Mental Health Day theme of connecting with community recognises something crucial - we do better when we don't try to recover or manage mental health challenges in isolation. Whether we're navigating our own mental health, supporting someone we love, or both, we need others.

Meaningful connection in mental health looks like:

Services that listen to lived experience voices and actually act on what they hear
Peer support where there's no hierarchy—just shared understanding
Family and friends who stick around even when things get messy
Workplaces that create psychological safety, not just tick compliance boxes
Communities that make space for honest conversations about mental health

The Gap Between Themes and Reality

It's worth acknowledging that while we're encouraged to connect with our communities, many people with lived experience face real barriers. Stigma still exists. Services can be hard to access. Some of us have been let down by systems that were supposed to help. Some of us don't feel safe connecting because past experiences taught us not to trust.

The international focus on humanitarian emergencies reminds us that for some people, connection has been severed by circumstances beyond their control. Displacement, trauma, loss - these things fracture the very communities we're being encouraged to connect with.

This doesn't mean the theme is wrong. It means we need to hold space for both the aspiration and the reality.

Small Acts of Connection

If you're looking for ways to connect meaningfully this World Mental Health Day, consider:

Reaching out to someone you've been thinking about but haven't contacted
Joining a peer support group
Sharing your story if you feel safe doing so - sharing your experience might help someone else feel less alone
Asking someone how they're really going, then actually listening to the answer
Connecting with services that are informed or serviced by lived experience perspectives

And if you're someone supporting others - carers, family, professionals - your role in fostering connection matters enormously. Creating spaces where people feel heard, believed, and respected is profound work.

Moving Forward Together

World Mental Health Day isn't about fixing everything in 24 hours. It's about pausing to acknowledge what matters, to see each other, and to recommit to the work of building mental health systems and communities that truly support people.

For those of us with lived experience, connection might be complicated. It might be hard-won. But it's also often what carries us through. Whether your community is two people or two hundred, whether it's in person or online, whether it's thriving or still being built - it matters.

This World Mental Health Day, we're here. We're connected. And we're committed to keeping the conversation going well beyond October.

Find Your Community

If community is something you have struggled to find, Lived Experience Australia partners with a number of different organisations that have ways to help you connect and find a community. Below are a few who foster meaningful connections in various ways:

Ending Loneliness Together - you can search their directory for either online or in person activities or opportunities to connect. Opportunities include Men's (and Women's) Sheds, Choirs, BBQ Groups, Book Clubs and more! Search >> HERE
SANE Community Forums. Connect with people who understand what you are going through, seek advice and surround yourself with support. With forum communities for topics such as: Managing Relationships; Talking Through Trauma and PTSD; Shoulder to Shoulder for Veterans (and a separate one for Families of Veterans); Friends, Families and Carers; and plenty more. Find out more >> HERE
Headspace for adolescents and young people - Want to connect with other young people? Or perhaps create a space just for you to build your own mental health and wellbeing toolkit? Or maybe you need some support and want to talk to a professional.
You get all this and more with a headspace account. Also, today (9th October) is headspace day 2025 so why not check it out >> HERE