Events
Moments from our mental wellness fair
On Wednesday, May 24, C4 convened its second annual Community on the Square to celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month with our neighbors in the North Center community. Volunteers from both our Youth & Family Services and Community & Rapid Response teams spoke to community members about the agency and its mission, shared wellness tips, and set up art supplies for young people to paint and draw.
The event fully embraced some of the key methods Mental Health America promoted this month for assessing how someone’s surroundings affect their mental well-being and what actions can be taken to strengthen it, including connecting more deeply to our local community, advocating for healthier community connections, and spending time outdoors.
Mental Health Awareness Month was established in 1949 but has gained more widespread attention in recent years due to greater awareness of mental health, mental illness, and recovery. The visibility brought about by the isolation and loss experienced in the pandemic was a catalyst for public acceptance of seeking support to address mental wellness. This year’s Mental Health Awareness Month theme was Look Around, Look Within; the theme encourages us all to examine how the environment around us affects our mental health.
In alignment with this focus, C4 hopes to both destigmatize seeking treatment and expand this empathy beyond the collective experiences of anxiety and depression to embrace preventative, community-level support for those with more acute needs. Individual wellness is not only the result of self-determination, but a host of community and systemic factors that shape and impact health as well.
To support C4’s mission and expand access to responsive, local community mental health resources, click here.