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Time to Talk Day 2025

To mark Time to Talk day the Scottish Community Mediation Centre puts a spotlight on neighbour disputes and mental health.

Talk with neighbour or community mediators around Scotland, and eventually you will hear about the rise amongst their clients of mental health issues in the past few years. There may be a range of contributing factors, from increased social isolation through to how we view the world around us. But whatever the causes may be, when two neighbours are in conflict, the impact of this conflict on their lives and those closest to them often includes their mental health.

In thriving communities, neighbours will often positively engage with each other, look out for one another and talk through any difficulties that they may have between them in a practical and peaceful way. Where those connections, those relationships, have not been built the danger is that a difficulty between two neighbours becomes not just a source of conflict, but something that impacts on their mental health.

In Scotland, disputes about noise have been the single largest type of dispute that community mediators come across regularly. The impact of noise on someone’s quality of living, their relationships around them and their sleep can be significant.

Mediators work with all parties in a dispute to help them move forward, to find an agreeable compromise. In doing so, the neighbours meet face to face. Although this can be difficult for neighbours to do, most mediators feel it is a critical part of mediation. After all, when the mediators have closed the mediation meeting, neighbours will inevitably see each other on the street or in the garden in future, and how they interact with each other going forward is key to developing a better relationship. Mediators help all neighbours in a dispute prepare for the mediation meeting, explore their feelings and concerns at separate visits and discuss what support they will need for the meeting to go ahead.

Mediators provide a safe space for neighbours in conflict to come together - to talk about what has been happening, to listen to each other and to develop an understanding. All parties are then helped to move towards a better way forward. Experienced mediators will, towards the end of a mediation meeting, discuss future communications. How, when and where those two neighbours speak to each other in the future is key to building that relationship after the meeting. Helping people talk more positively and openly with each other can lay the foundations to improve mental health.

If you or someone you know is having a difficulty with neighbours in your community, contact your local mediation service. 

To learn more, why not read a mediation case study