Community is Powerful Medicine
Many of us know that people with mental illness live—on average—25 years less than the overall population. There are many pieces to this puzzle: unequal access to health care, poverty, discrimination, metabolic syndrome, smoking, drug use... the list goes on and on.
A 2013 study* found that social isolation is as likely to reduce life expectancy as smoking and high blood pressure. Connection can literally save our lives.
We see how mental illness can contribute to social isolation: through alienation from family and community, stigma, vulnerability. Recently a tenant tearfully told me about the dread he feels thinking about going to the store for his cup of coffee. Each morning he wonders which cashier will be at the counter, hoping it won’t be the young man that he says makes fun of him.
At Vyse’s weekly health and wellness group earlier this spring, we talked about the importance of community. Some folks took copies of the current Recovery Connections calendar, and we discussed new groups at Vyse. Some people were interested; others were mostly wondering when the split pea soup would be ready. As the soup simmered, a few of us did jigsaw puzzles, talked and listened to music.
Soon someone asked to turn it up. I cranked the radio, and suddenly two tenants and a housing counselor were dancing around to Pharrell’s “Happy,” while the rest of us cracked up in our chairs. Big smiles filled the room. In a building that many days feels heavy with individual troubles, it was a moment of joy, laughter—and connection. And moments like that, however simple they may seem, are powerful medicine.
* Matthew Pantell, David Rehkopf, Douglas Jutte, S. Leonard Syme, John Balmes, and Nancy Adler. Social Isolation: A Predictor of Mortality Comparable to Traditional Clinical Risk Factors. American Journal of Public Health: November 2013, Vol. 103, No. 11, pp. 2056-2062. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301261
