World Mental Health Day 2026: A poem on listening and being heard

What does it mean to truly hear someone? Not only to listen, but to let what we hear change what we do next.

Tomorrow, Saturday 10 October, is World Mental Health Day. This year’s theme, Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change, calls for people with lived experience to be listened to and involved in the decisions on policies and services that affect them.

Listening is also where the following poem began. Madeleine Kate McGowan wrote it in November 2025 while following discussions on how arts and culture can benefit mental health and well-being during the final conference of the Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region project in Vilnius. It reflects what she heard there, including the call to treat people’s experiences as a form of evidence, and it ends by urging people to make themselves heard.

We hope it offers a moment of reflection as you head into the weekend.

Oh, human

By Madeleine Kate McGowan

The color of anger.

The shape of war.

This darkness inside me.

As a song for more.

                                                                                                            Oh human! (chorus)

                                                                                                            What does it feel like

                                                                                                                        this life of yours?

A book as a bullet.

A dance as a pill.

A case full of poems,

were the doctors will.

                                                                                                            Oh human! (chorus)

                                                                                                            What does it smell like

                                                                                                                        this joy of yours?

A feeling expressed,

because loneliness kills.

To be genuinely curious.

Brings life in, still.

                                                                                                            Oh, human! (chorus)

                                                                                                            What does it taste like

                                                                                                            this dream of more?

This language of art.

Who does it belong to?

It makes you choose life.

Depression gone years ago.

                                                                                                            Oh, human! (chorus)

                                                                                                            How do you dance

                                                                                                                        this life of yours?

A sense of belonging.

It sharpens your senses.

Stories as evidence.

Reflected through different lenses.

                                                                                                            Oh human! (chorus)

                                                                                                            How does it sound

                                                                                                            when you sing your fear?

This is our shared language.

This art of ours.

Crossing borders and nations.

Touching our deeper powers.

                                                                                                            Oh human! (chorus)

                                                                                                            How is it

                                                                                                                        to care so deeply?

A young soldier

Walking through long grass

Walking through a field

In a night

Not long from here

He carries no bullets

Just a case in his hand

A case full of poems

With the grace of the land

There is a young woman

Divided by war

With a mother who’s distant

And a father that wants no more

She steps into a space

Where she can just be

Where her sorrow becomes color

And her pain is sung free

In this room full of poets

Because that’s what we are

If we dare to stay open

To the mud and the stars

To the shakes of aliveness

In the song of a bird

                                                                                                            Oh human – (chorus)

                                                                                                            Let your songs

                                                                                                                        be heard!

This poem was produced within the framework of the “Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region” project funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2021-2027.

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