From stigma to scented candles: How Malta’s ‘ruħ soda’ is turning pain into community power

The journey of a strong soul: How Malta’s quiet resilience is rewriting the mental-health story
By Hot Malta staff

Valletta’s 7 a.m. cannon still hangs in the air when 34-year-old Kim Borg wheels her market-stall into Merchant Street. The wooden boards are painted the colour of ħobż biż-żejt tomatoes; on them she arranges hand-poured candles labelled “Riħa ta’ Sabbaħ” – the smell of morning. To tourists they are souvenirs; to Kim they are proof that a Maltese life can survive depression, post-partum psychosis and the whispered mantra “m’aħniex ta’ nies li nkellmuha” – we are not the kind of people who talk about it.

Three years ago Kim closed her florist shop in Birkirkara after a breakdown that landed her in Mount Carmel Hospital. “I expected neighbours to cross the street,” she admits, stirring a vat of beeswax. “Instead, old ladies pressed rosemary into my hand and said, ‘Qalb tajba għandek, qalbi’ – you have a good heart, my dear.” That invisible thread of solidarity, spun on balconies where laundry flaps like prayer flags, is what Maltese call “ruħ soda” – the strong soul. Today Kim’s stall funds free therapy sessions for new mothers, paid for by candle sales and a donation jar shaped like a knight’s helmet. Last month she raised €4,730, enough to sponsor 27 sessions at the Richmond Foundation. “We turned stigma into scented wax,” she laughs. “Take that, 700 years of silence.”

Her story is one tile in a national mosaic that is finally allowing cracks to show – and light to pour through. According to the National Statistics Office, requests for mental-health support in Malta rose 42 % between 2019 and 2023, but suicides among 20- to 34-year-olds dropped 18 %. Dr. Claudia Psaila, consultant at Mater Dei’s Crisis Resolution Team, argues the numbers do not contradict each other. “When people speak earlier, emergencies shrink,” she says, sipping Kinnie in the hospital canteen. “Malta’s challenge was never the absence of strength; it was the solitude of strength.”

That solitude is being dismantled in unlikely places. In Żejtun, parish priest Fr. Rene’ Pace opens his 17th-century sacristy on Tuesdays for “Kliem u Kafe’”, a peer-support group where men discuss anxiety over espresso brewed on the credenza. “Jesus spent 40 days in the desert; we spend 40 minutes in conversation,” Fr. Pace shrugs, noting that attendance has outstripped evening Mass. Meanwhile, Gozitan farmers meet at Ta’ Pinu shrine at dawn to share stories of debt and drought; psychologists from the Gozo General Hospital shuttle across the channel to join them, clipboards swapped for pitchforks. The fields, they say, are Malta’s oldest therapy couch.

Even Carnival – once a glittery mask for collective trauma – is being repurposed. This February, floats in Nadur included a giant papier-mâché tear wearing 2020-shaped sunglasses; inside, performers handed out cards printed with the 1770 helpline. “Gozitans invented the spontaneous parade; now we’re parading our feelings,” coordinator Martina Azzopardi grins. The crowd cheered louder for the tear than for the usual political satire.

Yet the journey is fragile. Waiting lists at state clinics still stretch for months, and private therapy averages €60 an hour – a tenth of the minimum wage. “We cannot candle our way out of under-funding,” warns Denise Grech, president of the Malta Mental Health Professionals Association. Her members want a 24-hour walk-in centre, modelled on Dublin’s Pieta House, inserted into the planned Boffa Hospital redevelopment. A petition launched last week gathered 11,000 signatures in 72 hours, propelled by TikTok videos shot on Sliema ferries where commuters hold up cardboard hearts.

Back in Valletta, Kim blows out her burner and packs the last candle. A cruise-ship passenger buys three, asking if the scent contains “sea and limestone”. Kim smiles: “It contains Malta – salt, sun and survival.” As the sun sets over the Grand Harbour, the cannon fires again, marking not conquest but continuity. Somewhere in Floriana a teenager hears the boom and texts his sister: “Can we talk?” The journey of a strong soul is no longer a solitary march; it is a national convoy, headlights on, winding through narrow village streets where every balcony is a potential lighthouse.