Mental Health Awareness Week 2025: Celebrating the power of community
We are proud to support Mental Health Awareness Week 2025, which runs from 12–18 May.
Led by the Mental Health Foundation, their chosen theme for this year “Community” offers a powerful reminder that connection, belonging, and mutual support are fundamental to our mental wellbeing.
Celebrating community at our mental health conference
The week is a celebration of the power of community to support our health and wellbeing and a call to action to strengthen these connections further.
With this in mind, we will be joined on Wednesday by hundreds of staff, patients, carers and members of the community at the South West London Mental Health Conference we are hosting together with our Integrated Care System.
The day will feature a range of sessions, including expert talks, interactive workshops, and collaborative activities led by a dozen different organisations from across South West London.
Empowering our communities
In recent years, we have seen just how vital strong communities are in helping people cope with adversity, loneliness, and mental ill health. Whether through neighbours checking in, peer support groups, or simply shared spaces to talk and feel heard, our communities often provide the first line of support for mental health.
Beyond these connections, when people need support through our services, we want to empower more people to recover, live well and stay well in the community, closer to their support networks. That’s why almost 95% of the care we provide happens in the community; be that at home, in care homes or in other informal settings – the right care, at the right time, in the right place.
As well as expanding our community mental health services, in recent years we have also been working hard to strengthen the work we do in this area through a number of different projects. These include:
• Our Better Communities Programme: This is transforming our care and environments and facilitating a £1bn investment across healthcare and urban development up to 2027. This include a £280m investment in new hospitals, and the creation of the new Springfield Village, incorporating over 1,200 new homes, a third of which are affordable and a new 32-acre park, with 700 new trees, an amphitheatre, ponds, a pavilion café, sensory gardens, and much more. (Look out for more information this week on the official opening event for Springfield Park!).
• Ethnicity and Mental Health Improvement Project (EMHIP): EMHIP is a key partnership with our local communities to reduce inequalities experienced by Black and Asian people in south London in access, experience and outcomes in mental health care. Key initiatives in place include local support hubs and our Home Placement Project.
• Hold the Hope: Hold the Hope is part of a life-saving suicide-prevention training session provided to local schools, the British Transport Police, and other organisations across South West London and beyond. The training is being delivered by the volunteers alongside the Trust’s suicide prevention lead.
• South London Listens: Born out of a community listening campaign that engaged over 6,000 people in 2021, the South London Listens Programme has developed into a collaboration of thousands of people, and a wide range of organisations, working to address challenges and inequalities that affect the health and wellbeing of people in south London – and to bring about real change.
• South West London and St George’s Charitable Fund: Since relaunching in 2023 our Trust charity has gone from strength to strength delivering a number of fundraising events and activities to support a range of projects for staff and patients across South West London.
• Mental Health First Aid training: Designed to break mental health stigma, raise mental health awareness and improve mental health literacy, our Mental Health First Aid programme is close to training nearly 200 local people. Courses provides attendee with an understanding of common mental health issues, skills and information to support positive wellbeing, and knowledge and confidence to spot signs and symptoms and of mental ill health on a first-aid basis. This week we are putting on a special course for colleagues working in our 10 local MPs offices, recognising that they often provide support to constituents as a first point of contact.
At South West London and St George's, community lies at the heart of everything we do. Whether it's through partnerships with local organisations, co-producing services with people who use them, or fostering inclusive spaces where everyone feels they belong, we know that recovery and wellbeing are deeply rooted in connection. The strength, resilience, and compassion found across the communities we serve will continue to shape our services and inspire our Trust mission, Making Life Better Together.
Keep a look out on our website and social media channels where we’ll be sharing further highlights from the conference and stories from across our services.
For more information and resources on Mental Health Awareness Week 2025 visit mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/public-engagement/mental-health-awareness-week
