The Ember Take on Scale — Is Bigger Always Better in Community Mental Health?
Nov 06, 2025
In global mental health, “scale” has long been seen as the gold standard for success. At Ember Mental Health, we ask whether bigger always means better. Drawing on our experience supporting community-led initiatives worldwide, this report challenges scale-as-size and reimagines it as scale-through-diversity. It calls for a more nuanced, sustainable approach that strengthens many locally rooted solutions rather than replicating a few universal ones. You can read and download the full report here
Over the years, scaling has become synonymous with progress. Yet, this one-size-fits-all approach often overlooks the diversity, complexity, and local context of mental health needs.
Community-based mental health initiatives (CBMHIs) that are aligned with the needs of the people they serve face the consequences — their impact is profound but not always “scalable” in the traditional sense.
At Ember, we are redefining what scale means. We believe true transformation comes not from expanding one-size-fits-all models but from scaling diversity — investing in many different organisations that together create a resilient, inclusive global mental health ecosystem.
What is clear more than ever is that a different approach is necessary. Through our work, we have witnessed first-hand the transformative power of support that is tailored to the unique needs, capacities, contexts and goals of these organisations. Our blueprint builds on this learning, offering a new approach to supporting and investing.
1 Rethinking scale itself to prioritise tailored, community-driven solutions over universal, one-size-fits-all interventions.
2. Centring to community-based solutions instead of sidelining them
3. Nurturing multiple pathways to impact instead of scale-centric
4. Diversity as the pathway to scale instead of only focusing on silver-bullet solutions: Nurturing community-led mental health initiatives at different stages of growth to build a diverse and resilient ecosystem of care.