The mental health benefits of community helping during crisis: Coordinated helping, community identification and sense of unity during theCOVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Communities are vital sources of support during crisis, providing collective contexts for shared identity and solidarity that predict supportive, prosocial responses. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a global health crisis capable of exerting a heavy toll on the mental health of community members while inducing unwelcome levels of social disconnection. Simultaneously, lockdown restrictions have forced vulnerable community members to depend upon the support of fellow residents.Fortunately, voluntary helping can be beneficial to the wellbeing of the helper as well as the recipient, offering beneficial collective solutions. Using insights from social identity approaches to volunteering and disaster responses, this study explored whether the opportunity to engage in helping fellow community members may be both unifying and beneficial for those engaging in coordinated community helping. Survey data collected in the UK during June 2020 showed that coordinated community helping predicted the psychological bonding of community members by building a sense of community identification and unity during the pandemic, which predicted

Doing it for us: Community identification predicts willingness to receive aCOVID‐19 vaccination via perceived sense of duty to the community

“…This dovetails neatly with the rise in COVID‐19 mutual aid groups which was discussed in the Introduction, as it suggests that as well as strength of community identification predicting engagement in these aid groups, people's engagement with aid groups might also strengthen their community identification. Indeed, recent work conducted during the pandemic has shown that community‐based coordinated help‐giving is linked to stronger community identification and, in turn, to a stronger sense of community‐based unity (Bowe et al, 2021). People have shown a strong desire to volunteer during the pandemic (such as the million UK people who registered to volunteer with the National Health Service or with volunteer centres; Guardian, 2020), but it will be important for organizations and communities to ensure that the necessary resources are invested in order to encourage volunteer retention by helping volunteers remain engaged with and satisfied by their voluntary work (e.g., Smithson, Rowley, & Fullwood, 2018).…”

“…These observations suggest that, to a significant extent, the pandemic has been understood and addressed by people at a local community level: a conclusion that has been reinforced further by the rise of COVID‐19 mutual aid groups (Bowe et al, 2021; Tiratelli & Kaye, 2020; Wakefield, Bowe, & Kellezi, 2021). These groups involve volunteers working together to support the most vulnerable in their community (e.g., the elderly, those with chronic illness, and others who were advised to shield themselves fully from the virus) by delivering food and medicine, sharing information and providing practical and emotional support (Mao, Fernandes‐Jesus, Ntontis, & Drury, 2020).…”

Prosociality during COVID‐19: Globally focussed solidarity brings greater benefits than nationally focussed solidarity

“…There are reasons to propose that perceived global common fate and shared threat will increase identification with others who share the same fate, and through this with help extended to those others, also in the context of the COVID‐19 crisis. As demonstrated in the context of many disasters, suffering from the same adversity can create new shared identities and solidarity with others who would formerly have been seen as outgroup members (Bowe et al, 2021 ; Ntontis et al 2021 ; Solnit, 2010 ). For example, in the context of a flooded community, common fate was positively associated with an emerging sense of community and identification with the group, as well as with social support (Ntontis et al, 2020 ).…”

More than a COVID-19 response: Sustaining mutual aid groups during and beyond the pandemic

“…Additionally, increasing social ties is often a benefit not only for long-term volunteers, but also for short-term and/or occasional volunteers (Hyde et al, 2014). Similar outcomes have been found in the COVID-19 context, with a recent study showing that community helping predicts community identification and unity during the pandemic, which in turn seems to increase well-being (Bowe et al, 2021).…”

“…Most of the published research on COVID-19 mutual aid groups has been descriptive (see Mao et al, 2021 for a review). However, some recent work has started to examine psychological processes (Bowe et al, 2021;Wakefield et al, 2021;Mao et al, in press), which is useful for addressing our questions of how such groups can be sustained.…”