The Care We Don’t See: Mental Health in the Streets

At Make-A-Day, we talk a lot about care. What it looks like. What it feels like. Who gives it, and who gets overlooked.

This Mental Health Awareness Week, we’ve been sitting with something that’s hard to talk about, but that shows up in every pop-up, every outreach event, every conversation we have with our neighbors living outside:

The labor of care is happening. Every day. But most people don’t see it.

When we think about mental health support, we tend to picture therapists, clinics, support groups, formal systems, with titles and credentials and funding behind them. But when you’re living under a bridge or in an encampment off the freeway, support often looks a little different.

It looks like someone sitting with you after the police come through and tear down your tent.

It looks like sharing a cigarette when someone’s anxiety is through the roof.

It looks like knowing who to go to when you need to talk, and trusting that person not to judge you for breaking down.

It’s easy to think of these as small gestures. But they are, in fact, survival strategies. They are peer-led systems of mental health support that happen outside of programs, outside of paperwork, outside of the places where most of us are taught to look.

The Emotional Labor of Survival

We see it all the time at our pop-ups and in our outreach.

Encampment leaders keeping an eye on folks they know are struggling.

Mothers making sure the new young person who just showed up doesn’t go to sleep hungry.

People checking on each other after an overdose, offering hugs, space, whatever someone needs to get through the day.

This is emotional labor. It is care work. And it is exhausting.

But it’s also largely invisible to the systems meant to provide mental health care. Our neighbors are filling in the gaps where services fall short, and doing it without pay, without recognition, and often while navigating their own traumas.

What If We Started Honoring That Labor?

We think it’s time to start talking about this labor for what it is: essential.

Peer-led support is not just a nice add-on to mental health services; it is the heart of what keeps people alive when systems don’t show up.

At Make-A-Day, we’re challenging ourselves to listen more closely to these peer care networks. To ask how we can support them, not just by bringing in services, but by backing the leaders already doing this work.

That might look like inviting more peer leaders into our planning and outreach efforts.

It might look like finding ways to pay them for their time and emotional labor.

It might look like making sure our pop-ups create space for community-led healing, not just outside services.

Because care is already happening in Columbus’ streets. It’s just not always happening where the rest of us are looking.