Unity in adversity

The nationwide protests of the past few weeks invoke feelings of internal and external chaos, making it hard to maintain a sense of mental calm. These events are hard enough for grown-ups to fathom and live through; youngsters, with limited templates for the ways of the world, are at a double disadvantage.

Can society be a protective shield for its young? Just as parents follow the vaccination rule book for immunity against infections, can we garner psychological immunity? Immunity that could counter psychological threats from social and emotional adversities? Immunity that could help a young person grow with a consistent, positive sense of self, and with resilience in the face of stress.

Interestingly, immunity and community share etymology. Munus is Latin for burden. Immunity conveys the idea of being without (im) burden (munus); community, that of coming together (com) to deal with burden (munus). Communities can indeed offer a form of collective protection—herd immunity—to safeguard the mental health and wellbeing of the youth. Shared burden reduces, buffers or prevents individual burden. Human beings are social animals. We don’t just happen to be here together; we thrive in co-dependence for survival, growth, identity and wellbeing. However, social living is not unique to humans. Smaller life forms such as insects show socially relevant behaviours: clusters of insects undertake grooming and waste removal for social immunity.

The scientific foundations of herd immunity were laid by William Whiteman Carlton Topley and Graham Selby Wilson, British bacteriologists who worked in London in the interwar era. Topley and Wilson observed that the spread of, and harm from, infection in groups of laboratory mice depended not only on a mouse’s individual immune status but also on the group to which it belonged. Mice in groups with higher immunisation rates were affected less. This discovery shifted prevention paradigms by demonstrating that every single person need not be immune; the herd’s collective immune status can offer protection.

Herd immunity breaks chains of transmission. Infective illnesses affect those not previously immunised. When immunised, even though the infective organism enters, it is killed or neutralised and not transmitted further. If a critical proportion of individuals in a community are immunised, they can together deal with the burden of infection and provide immunity to the non-immunised in the herd. Immunisation campaigns, capitalising on herd immunity, have made great strides in infection control, as seen in the eradication of the once-deadly smallpox and the elimination of the highly disabling polio in most countries.

In the second half of the 20th century, the focus of public health gradually shifted from infectious to non-infectious diseases. Following the declaration of the Decade of the Brain in the 1990s, mental health has received increasing attention, and rightly so. Individual mental health shapes not only the individual’s health and wellbeing, but also family relationships, social cohesion, educational and economic participation, and the larger welfare and functioning of human society. In turn, individual mental health is shaped by the herd (family, school, community) that scaffolds it.

In the timeless Fifteen Thousand Hours, Michael Rutter, the father of child psychiatry, and his co-authors presented their systematic research into whether, and how, schools matter. They discussed that what matters is not the school’s size, name or curricular selection, but the school climate: the social and emotional atmosphere of a school and the sense children get about safety, fairness, support, encouragement and autonomy. Children derive this sense from the quality of their relationships with other children and teachers, from the nature and consistency of school rules, and from the sense of belonging a school inculcates. In a conducive school climate, children flourish developmentally, in physical and mental health and in long-term life-skills.

Imagine a child who struggles to keep up in class. Reading takes longer, attention wanders and anxiety makes answering questions in front of peers an ordeal. Soon, the school begins to see the child as a problem. Parents are advised to find another school, one where their child might fit in better. When mental health professionals reach out to explore how the school might support the child, they are met with requests for undertakings absolving the institution of responsibility should academic performance or the child’s mental health deteriorate. Somewhere in this process, we have lost sight of a fundamental truth: the child is not there to serve the school; the school is there to serve the child.

Imagine, instead, a teacher who recognises that restlessness may signal a need for movement, that poor reading may call for a different teaching approach, or that anxiety may soften when a child feels safe rather than scrutinised. Imagine classmates who include rather than ridicule, and a school that sees collaboration with parents and mental health professionals as part of its responsibility. The child’s difficulties may not disappear overnight. But the child no longer has to face them alone. In this way, the herd can nurture the child’s mental health, building environments where the child belongs, struggles, grows and thrives.

At the societal level, Scandinavian countries offer an intriguing lesson in collective wellbeing. These countries consistently rank highest in the happiness index, demonstrating how interpersonal trust, supportive institutions and social security contribute to how people experience their lives. Publications from the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen on the ideas of hygge (cosiness) and lykke (happiness) view wellbeing as resulting from social cohesiveness, belonging and shared experiences, rather than from wealth and achievement. For young people, such social environments provide developmentally favourable contexts that support physical and mental health and wellbeing. It is not that mental illnesses are not reported in these countries. Rather, the positive societal space fosters the ability to face adversity, early identification of mental distress and appropriate support for recovery and rehabilitation. Young people don’t suffer from adversity; they suffer from being alone with it.

Today, urban spaces have little room for childhood. Open spaces have given way to buildings and parking lots; streets are dominated by traffic; in apartment complexes, children’s games become a source of inconvenience to adults. Football is too noisy, running around is disruptive and the ball might damage property. Childhood needed the Karnataka High Court’s assistance in 2026. The court addressed restrictions on children’s play in a residential community, directing the owners’ association to reconsider its policy and emphasising that children cannot be deprived of spaces to play. In designing cities and managing communities, whose needs are prioritised? Play is not an optional childhood luxury. It is where children develop friendships, learn to negotiate differences, discover physical capabilities and experience belonging. When urban environments systematically deny children these opportunities, we risk depriving them of experiences fundamental to social and emotional development.

A society that truly cares for its future, namely the young, must create spaces where childhood and youth can flourish. The herd must nurture mental health, not expect youth to survive environments and routines. Much of our response to youth mental health has taken the form of classroom teaching of life-skills, as though resilience, emotional regulation and healthy relationships can simply be added to a curriculum. Skills matter, but they develop within relationships and environments. They are imbibed, not taught. The herd provides collective support through conscientious engagement with young people and mindful design of the spaces they inhabit—homes, schools, streets, playgrounds, public spaces and our digital worlds. Herd immunity lies not in making the young invulnerable, but in creating communities that hold, support and protect them.