May 13, 2025 2 min read Mental Health Week

Power in Community: Kindness Isn’t Just Felt—It’s Built

Riders Minds

93.3% of equestrians have experienced kindness in this community. That’s the lead finding from Riders Minds survey, released for Mental Health Awareness Week 2025—and it stops you in your tracks. Because when the world feels sharp-edged and closed in, kindness can be the one thing that keeps someone in the saddle.

It’s not rare. It’s real. It happens in arenas, in yards, in quiet corners where no one’s filming. But we need to be clear: kindness doesn’t undo everything. The same research shows that 80.5% of our community has experienced poor mental health in the past three years. That number isn’t a footnote. It’s a warning sign. And it’s not about fragility—it’s about pressure. Financial. Emotional. Physical. Non-stop and mostly invisible.

So when someone meets that pressure with kindness, it’s not a throwaway gesture. It’s a choice. It’s the livery owner who notices when you stop talking and doesn’t look away. The rider who stands beside you at the mounting block—not to fix you, but to be there. The person who remembers your horse’s name and says it with care, even when they’re rushed off their feet.

That’s what we mean by community. Not a poster or a hashtag—but the real thing. The dependable thing. The thing that still shows up when everything else falls away.

This week, we don’t need slogans. We need truth. We need to talk about what’s working, yes—but also what isn’t. Because if kindness is this widespread, yet suffering is still this high, then it’s time we connected the dots.

At EQUITAS, we don’t just believe in community—we move with it. Every campaign, every piece of advocacy, every story we tell is about making this world more liveable, more human, and more honest. And this week, we’re starting exactly where we need to: with the people.

Over the next two articles, we’ll go deeper. First, into the pressures that sit behind these statistics. The kind that don’t show up on entry forms or social feeds, but run under everything. Then, we’ll explore what a stronger, kinder equestrian future could actually look like—not in theory, but in practice.

Because kindness isn’t a fringe benefit. It’s the ground we build from.

Read the full Riders Minds article here Explore mental health support resources