Community as an Intervention to Isolation | By Soufia Bham

Words by Soufia Bham | Art by Lizzie Quirke

Depression can be isolating. There’s a sense of alienation — and of not being enough — that has always accompanied my own mental health struggles. Looking back, I can pinpoint moments of adolescence — when my depression was at its worst — when I did everything to detach myself from those around me despite feeling very alone. The moments of clarity are far apart and often, young people (like I was then), are ill-equipped to recognise the signs or symptoms of a depressive episode.

At 25, I have come to embrace my struggles, to face them through a combination of therapy, medication and incidentally through building a support system; a community. When we speak about communities, we tend to think of the ones in which we were born or raised or happen to find ourselves. The community that I’m talking about is however, the one that we build based on our life experiences, and the people we meet on the way. My journey as a foreign student navigating university life, brought me to an eclectic group of people, across continents, who made it possible for me to have the simple realization that I was not alone in feeling like this. I learnt that depression, anxiety and panic are far more common amongst people of my age group, my university or my apartment block than we are willing to admit.

What started as a subconscious community-building exercise quickly became a very deliberate construction of a support system that has helped me ground myself in moments of relapse. As the panic attacks became more intense in 2017, a close friend and I decided to have an honest conversation on what triggers I can avoid and what works when I’m unable to cope on my own. Knowing that I can call them at any time when I’m struggling and that they will know what to say or do has been a big step in warding off the anxiety of public panic attacks. The beauty of being deliberate in our community building is that there are spaces in which we are better suited to serve, and others from which we have far more to gain. To be able to tell those apart and to engage intentionally with those around us creates a more supportive environment when it comes to mental health. The biggest learning experience is perhaps that we can be part of multiple communities, just as we can fulfill different roles in the same community. Not everyone we encounter is equipped, ready or willing to contend with mental health issues in young people but that does not have to mean isolation or alienation; instead, we can work on building support systems that center on healing and resilience. To have a support system — a friend who will check-in or to be that person for someone else — allows us to have harder conversations about therapy, medication, withdrawal symptoms and all the other aspects of mental illness that are still rarely addressed.

Over the past 10 years, my mental health has been a rollercoaster. It isn’t always easy to speak about it but being part of multiple communities, virtual and otherwise, has allowed me to find a space where it feels okay to share, to question and to reflect on my progress. Communities have the power to build or break our mental health; the people we populate our lives with play an important role in how we view ourselves and our healing process. I have come to believe that recognising their importance is essential if we are to be successful in eliminating the stigma around mental health.