I'm spending a year in Texas trying to figure out why community mental health looks so different here than it does at home.
I'm Rainer Mere, a psychologist from Tallinn. In the summer of 2026 I moved my family to Austin for a Fulbright year, to learn how a very different country tries to keep its communities well, and to find out what a year inside that system does to the way I understand my own work. This site follows the year as it happens: the research underneath it, and the letters I write from inside it. It has a beginning. The middle and the end I am still living.
The newsletter
Kirjad Austinist
Letters from Austin, sent when there's something worth saying.
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The year
A family, a new country, and a year spent trying to understand how a place keeps its communities well. The story, as it unfolds.
The Fulbright Year → -
The work
A PhD on why the same good programme turns out so differently from one community to the next, run inside a five-country EU research project.
About & Research → -
The letters
Kirjad Austinist: letters from inside the year, sent when there's something worth saying. This is where you follow along.
Newsletter →