Mental Health Awareness week 2025

Community

This year’s mental health awareness week, which is from 12th – 18th May, is all about community. Our fantastic range of mental health and wellbeing resources are co-created by professionals and people with their own personal experience of mental health struggles.

They’re aimed at people who need support with their mental health, their families and friends, professionals and anyone interested in learning more about mental health and wellbeing.

Although Recovery College Online is a website, we’re still passionate about creating a community. We work collaboratively with service users, carers, young people, other organisations, and anyone who wants to get involved!

Our content often focuses on Connectedness – which is the first of the five CHIME Factors – and we often promote this through trying to create a sense of community or understanding what community can mean or looks like to individuals. We hope that the co-creation aspect of Recovery College Online helps to create a feeling of community.

Mental Health Swims is an organisation who are passionate about community. It was founded in 2019 by Rachel, after she received a mental health diagnosis. Rachel went for her first cold water swim and was inspired to set up her own group, after the amazing benefits she felt from that very first swim. You can read more about the organisation on their website.

Mental Health Swims has very kindly shared this beautifully inspiring short video with us. The video features real people and their reasons for trying cold water swimming (or open water swimming), and the huge benefits this has had to their mental health and wellbeing, as well as the communities they’ve found.

You can read a personal story of open water swimming in the Stories section of our website. They talk about how swimming in the sea has helped them to find purpose and has brought about a connection to nature.