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 ultimate goal for mental health initiatives. At Ember Mental Health, we ask whether bigger always means better. Drawing on our experience working with community-led initiatives worldwide, this piece challenges scale-as-size and reimagines it as scale-through-diversity; it calls for a more nuanced, community-centered approach that shifts the focus from scaling a few ‘silver-bullet’ solutions to embracing complexity and diversity at scale. You can read and download the full piece here.
Over the years, scaling interventions has become a gold standard for success within global mental health. Yet, this one-size-fits-all approach often overlooks the diversity, complexity, and local context of mental health needs.
Community-based mental health initiatives that are deeply rooted in the communities they serve face the greatest consequences — their impact is profound but not always “scalable” in the traditional sense.
At Ember, we are reimagining scale in a way that aligns with the needs of community-led initiatives. 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.
Our blueprint builds on this learning, offering a new approach to supporting and investing in mental health initiatives within global mental health
1. From sidelining to centering community-led solutions: Ember addresses this gap through advocating for these initiatives for their unique ability to meet local needs in holistic, tailored ways, and by fostering social inclusion and lasting mental health recovery.
2. From “silver-bullet” solution to scaling diversity: To scale diversity, Ember supports and invests in mental health initiatives of different shapes and sizes, which collectively builds a diverse and resilient ecosystem of care, prioritising diversity as the pathway to scale.
3. From one-size-fits-all to rethinking scale itself: Ember prioritises tailored and community-driven solutions over universal, one-size-fits-all interventions showcasing genuine care.
4. From scale-centric to nurturing multiple pathways for impact: Ember supports organisations to sustain, transform, or scale their work, by centering on financial sustainability and allowing them to choose the pathway that is the most reliable for their model, context and vision.