May is observed around the world as Mental Health Awareness Month. In Korea, the month arrives with a figure that has remained unchanged in 20 years: the highest suicide rate among OECD countries. The government has not been idle. Mental health services have expanded, consultation fees have fallen and routine screening is now common in primary care. Yet the numbers stay the same.

The root of this stalled crisis lies not in a pharmacy but in a government office. For instance, Britain appointed a minister for loneliness in 2018. This position was a formal recognition that isolation is a medical condition that merits a state response. Research backed the move. Chronic loneliness now carries a mortality risk comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Psychiatric care in most countries, Korea included, rests on the assumption that despair reflects a chemical imbalance that medication can correct. For many patients, this is true, and the medication saves their lives. For many others, it is not. The wound is rooted somewhere else.

Imagine someone who has lost a job, a marriage or even a child. An antidepressant might help him sleep or reduce his anxiety for a time. But it cannot bring back his sense of belonging or purpose. His pain comes from lost roles, relationships and the story he believed about his life. Medicine cannot rebuild that story; however, a thoughtful community can.

British family doctors started to notice this in the late 1990s. Patients showed clear signs of depression, but medication did not help. Over time, doctors saw that the real problem was a loss of connection. The process is straightforward. When a doctor sees a patient whose problems go beyond what medicine can fix, instead of increasing the dose, the doctor refers her to a link worker. This trained professional, part of the National Health Service (NHS), meets with the patient, listens and connects the patient with local activities such as a reading group, community garden, choir, volunteer work, faith group or art class. In 2015, the NHS made social prescribing official.

Now, research supports this approach. A 2025 meta-analysis of over 160,000 people from the United States, Europe and Japan found that a sense of purpose in life is linked to fewer symptoms of depression, even when factors like income, health and social isolation are considered. The benefit of having meaning in life does not depend on wealth, health or loneliness. In the early 2020s, Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare funded small pilot programs that connected outpatient psychiatric care with public libraries, community arts programs and faith-based volunteer networks. These pilots exist on paper but are still fragmented in practice. What is missing is not evidence or infrastructure. What is needed is a mandate and a named professional role — someone whose job is to turn a diagnosis of despair into a prescription for belonging.

Korea already has the resources it needs. The country has one of the highest numbers of public libraries per person in Asia. Faith communities from many traditions are still active. Local governments support community arts programs in almost every district.

It is important to be clear that social prescribing does not replace psychiatric medication or crisis care. Both are still essential for serious mental illness, and it would be dangerous to suggest otherwise. The main point is this: When the real problem is a loss of meaning or connection, the solution should include both social support and medical treatment.

Britain’s loneliness minister did not end the crisis, but the role made loneliness a public issue rather than a private failing. As Korea observes Mental Health Awareness Month while holding the OECD’s highest suicide rate, it already has the infrastructure for a different kind of mental health care: One that does not begin in the pharmacy but in the library, the choir or the faith community. What is missing is not more research or more buildings, but the collective will to recognize that despair is not only a medical condition but a shared social one.

Choi Hee-jin is an educator and practical theologian, Yale Divinity School fellow (2025–2026), exploring medical humanities at Duke. She writes about medicine, technology, and human flourishing, with imagination and hope, at Human Becoming (humanbecom.ing).

Source: Korea Times News