Nominee Summary
Change Mental Health convenes and chairs the National Rural and Islands Mental Health Forum, a network of 496 members across 337 organisations from the public, private, third, health and research sectors. Created in 2017 with the Scottish Government and SRUC, the Forum exists to make it everyone's business to tackle poor mental health, so that no one faces mental illness alone, no matter where they live. It connects communities, researchers and policymakers to challenge stigma, share what works and shape national policy. Named in the Scottish Government's Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, it turns shared rural challenges into shared solutions.
Overcoming Challenges
Rural areas make up 98% of Scotland's land but hold around 17% of its population, so support is often distant, stretched and hard to reach. Isolation, poor transport, patchy digital connectivity and a lack of anonymity can stop people asking for help, and stigma can run deep in close communities where everyone knows everyone. The Forum's own survey at the Royal Highland Show heard this directly, with respondents naming stigma, lack of privacy and limited local services as the barriers that hold people back. When Change Mental Health and SRUC's Rural Policy Centre surveyed rural mental health in 2017, they found no shared picture of how people with mental illness experienced daily life across rural Scotland, and no single network bringing the right people together to act on it. The Forum was built to close that gap. Rather than working alone, Change Mental Health chose to convene, bringing organisations from farming, health, research, business and community life around one table and grounding the work in lived experience. When the pandemic made in-person events impossible, the Forum moved online, which widened its reach rather than shrinking it. That network has now grown to 496 members across 337 organisations, and membership stays free so the smallest community group can take part alongside national bodies. What began as a knowledge gap is now a trusted national network reaching communities from the islands in the north and west to the Borders in the south.
Supporting the community
The Forum belongs to rural Scotland, not to any one organisation – although Change Mental Health are incredibly proud to Chair the Forum. Its members are the people who already hold rural communities together, including farmers, charities, health teams, researchers, employers and volunteers, and the Forum gives them the knowledge, connections and confidence to support mental health where they live and work. Practical support runs through everything. Across the year the Forum delivered nine online sessions with 627 registrations, creating trusted spaces to share what works on issues rural communities know well, from suicide prevention and youth wellbeing to climate anxiety in farming communities and life with a learning disability in remote places. Its work with Police Scotland and RSABI produced a mental health support leaflet that now reaches the holders of more than 100,600 firearms, shotgun and air weapon certificates in Scotland, connecting with people who may never have previously approached a traditional mental health service. The same resource has since been adopted across England and Wales. The Forum also takes mental health into the heart of rural life. At the 2025 Royal Highland Show its stand welcomed 2,850 visitors across four days, opening up conversations about wellbeing and gathering 1,336 survey responses on what rural communities need when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. Everything the Forum does is shaped by people with firsthand experience of rural mental ill health, so support reflects real lives rather than assumptions. No one in rural Scotland should face mental illness alone.
Ethical/environmental standards
Change Mental Health built the Forum on a clear ethical principle - the people most affected by rural mental ill health should shape the response. Lived experience guides the agenda, membership is free so cost never decides who has a voice, and organisations from the public, private, third, health and research sectors work side by side without any one interest taking over. Evidence is gathered and shared openly with members and policymakers, so the Forum's influence rests on what rural communities actually report. Inclusion is treated as a standard in its own right. The Forum works to reach groups too often overlooked in rural areas, including island residents, young people, people with learning disabilities, refugees and ethnic minority communities, alongside those in agriculture where stigma can be most entrenched. The Forum's work is closely tied to the land and the people who care for it. Farmers, crofters and land managers carry real pressures, and their wellbeing underpins the sustainable management of Scotland's countryside. Recent seminars have addressed the mental health impact of climate change anxiety and the Scottish Government's Land Use Strategy, connecting wellbeing to the future of rural land. Delivering the programme online also keeps travel to a minimum across great distances, lowering the environmental cost of bringing rural Scotland together while widening who can take part. The result is work that is fair, inclusive and rooted in the land and communities it serves.