Community as a Superpower: A call for inclusion and mentorship on World Refugee Week 2025

June 20th is World Refugee Day and the theme this year is ‘solidarity with refugees’. It is also Refugee Week, for which the theme is ‘Community as a Superpower’. At PLOS Mental Health, we consistently provide a platform for the perspectives of those with lived experience across communities. As highlighted in our recent blog for Mental Health Awareness Week, we hold the view that we are all part of the same, diverse community. Progress and acceptance requires us to listen to, and learn from, everyone – with the absence of assumptions, prejudice and stigma.

In the latest Opinion in PLOS Mental Health, Yasir Essar and Dr Gabriel Fabreau from University of Calgary take us through Yasir’s traumatic journey as a refugee – having fled from Afghanistan in 2021 before he could complete his dentistry training. PLOS Mental Health published an article at the beginning of this year, which describes some of the changes in the well-being of those who stayed in Afghanistan.

Based on his experience of the systemic barriers faced by refugees and the eventual support and mentorship that he was able to secure, which shape his circumstances today, Yasir provides a number of important recommendations that are aimed at improving refugee integration and, as a result, their well-being. Details can be found in the abovementioned Opinion, but in short these include:

• Institutes should design programs that are able to accommodate refugees – including those without official documentation. 
• Support should extend beyond scholarships and include coaching and mentorship
• Credential recognition must be strengthened to enable career continuations or transitions into alternate career paths
• Many sectors must work collaboratively to provide holistic support (civil society, academic institutions, governments)

As Yasir explains:

‘Implementing these measures will not only empower displaced youth but also foster global resilience, prosperity, and mental health in the face of future displacement crises’.

PLOS Mental Health is incredibly grateful to Yasir for sharing his experience with us and using it to help inform the way in which we support the well-being of refugees. 

‘As Khaled Hosseini reminds us, refugees share the same aspirations for safety, belonging and opportunity as others. Yet structural barriers persistently prevent them from rebuilding their lives and contributing fully to society.’
Essar & Fabreau, 2025

As with all notable days, this is an opportunity to continue much needed conversations rather than tick a box and then not revisit the conversation until the same time next year. PLOS Mental Health has indeed published a number of pieces that help us to understand the mental health needs and barriers of refugees. Such articles include:

• Fleeing the war: A socio-ecological perspective on the mental health of internally displaced and refugee children and adolescents living in the Kurdistan region of Iraq 
• “My home is (now) at peace”: Evaluating the relevance, acceptability and potential scalability of a guided self-help intervention for male refugees in Uganda
• Lebanese and Syrian refugee parents’ experiences of accessing mental health care for their children in Lebanon: Findings from a qualitative study
• Mental health issues of children and young people displaced by conflict
• Age-at-migration, ethnicity and psychosis risk: Findings from the EU-GEI case-control study

We will continue to serve as a platform for these vital discussions. You can take a look at all of our articles here.