World Mental Health Day- Taking Care
October 10 marks the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Day. Normally the dialogue around mental health and volunteering is about all the benefits the volunteering can offer to people; a sense of purpose and belonging, a sense of accomplishment. These are all true. So much so that the United Kingdom and other places have now taken on the idea of social prescribing. There is also other intersection of mental health and volunteering; the individuals and their complex existence that walks through the door of organizations across the country every day as volunteers. If you interact with humans on a day to day basis than chances are you are navigating someone’s mental health. We talk a lot at VolunteerConnector about being humans first and sometimes that is an identity that can get lost in all the valuable work that the charitable sector does. It is so critical however that we all take care of each other. If we believe that volunteerism is fundamental to our community cohesion and individual’s sense of belonging than we must also hold the responsibility of caring for people when they are not at their best. A great resource in this space is the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Mental Health Continuum. If you are seeing a shift in a person who you volunteer alongside, it might be a good idea to start there. The more we normalize these conversations that stronger our communities will be.