Cultivating compassion in volatile times

Socially, economically and culturally, it feels like we are living through a decisive moment in human history – a time of existential adaptation. We’re facing shifting macro global forces, including climate change, rapid technological shifts and rising inequality, while closer to home and further downstream, it’s financial pressure, housing stress and extreme weather. 

In Australia and around the world, an increasingly cynical and divisive political discourse is undermining trust in civic institutions and testing the viability of democracy itself. All this is unfolding against a cultural backdrop that seems to place high value on individualism, materialism and competition.

If we follow the arc of human evolution, we’ve never been healthier, safer or more prosperous. We have demonstrated our resilience time and again. Yet for the past five years in Australia, it has felt as though we’re living in a state of “permacrisis”; compounding events that are provoking stress and anxiety without reprieve. 

We’ve moved immediately from catastrophic bushfires to a protracted pandemic, through a shrill and heartbreaking expression of racism and now, to simmering cost-of-living pressures. No wonder we’re feeling untethered.

Quite naturally, these conditions will present a challenge to our mental health, directly and indirectly. We might feel particularly sensitive to loss or failure, and perhaps more attuned to any sense of threat in our daily lives. As humans, we’re evolved and socialised to find safety in calm and certainty. Uncertainty – in our world, our communities and our daily lives – can bring stress and discomfort that we often try to avoid. 

But we can remind ourselves that we have managed change before. We have done it with hope, with action and with each other. Change is inevitable and arguably, change is what our world needs right now. 

The question is how we can support ourselves and each other through this moment. 

We can start by looking to First Nations peoples. Learning from the wisdom of First Nations peoples, we can recognise that our mental health and wellbeing as individuals rely on the health and wellbeing of the world around us. By demonstrating the interrelatedness of mind, body, family and kinship, community, culture, Country and spirit, the First Nations construct of social and emotional wellbeing presents an eloquent, holistic expression of how our mental health takes shape. It invites us to think of our mental health as an extension of the health of the complex, dynamic and interwoven systems on which it relies. 

Relevant, then, is the health of society. Social determinants that influence our mental health include income, employment, education, housing, adverse childhood experiences and access to mental health support. 

Fundamentally, these determinants stem from inequality – from a power imbalance that is often entrenched across generations of disadvantage. As the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests, levels of distress among communities need to be understood less in terms of individual pathology and more as a response to social injustice. 

We can think of some forms of emotional distress as a response to difficult life circumstances and not as a particular disorder. Australians have made it clear that equality and wellbeing matter to them, and that they expect governments to act on these issues. 

Beyond Blue will continue working with lived experience and our sector colleagues to push for reforms that address systemic inequity, and for economic frameworks that measure our nation’s collective mental wealth. 

Social capital is a part of this. Do we know our neighbours? Do we trust them? Demonstrating care, taking an interest in others, sharing experiences and pursuing common goals can foster connection, belonging and meaning. By building communities that are inclusive, respectful, warm and which value diversity, we are supporting our own mental health and the mental health of those around us. We know social cohesion is a powerful force.

There are steps we can take as individuals, too. We can acknowledge our discomfort – and learn to see it differently. We can explore ways to solve our problems and talk them through with people we trust or who have had similar experiences. We can learn skills and healthy ways to cope. And we can identify our values – who we are and what really matters to us – then choose, every day, the actions that match. We can pursue activities that mean something to us, relationships that fill us up and tasks that help us feel accomplished and inspired. And we can try to see our struggles as a chance to grow. 

These are volatile times. And there is a way through. We can evolve through this challenging period by drawing on the parts of ourselves and our communities that promote altruism and compassion. We can focus on what gives our lives meaning and we can acknowledge that our individual wellbeing relies on the wellbeing of the connected, interdependent systems and communities that shape us.