A partner ministry of The General Commission on Religion and Race |
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December 2021
Volume 11, #6
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Image from Compassion in Action Guide - learn more and download through link in final article below.
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TheVOICE
of the
United Methodist
Disability Connection
MENTAL HEALTH EDITION
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Greetings in the name of Christ!
Do you know what it’s like to have “long-haul COVID,” with prolonged and repeating symptoms for months and months? Rev. Corrie Hermans-Webster has been living with COVID for over a year and a half. Read her article to find out more.
The renowned writer and spiritual guide, Henri Nouwen, lived with mental illness. Read more about the message of his book, “The Wounded Healer,” in Rev. Tiffanie Lyons’ article.
The Mental Health Task Force (MHTF) has members who are trained in Mental Health First Aid which is similar to First Aid training. People are taught how to take care of people in a mental health emergency until professional help can be brought in. We believe the skills learned in this course will save lives and change the world, so we want this course to be available to all United Methodists. To learn more, read my article. Don’t miss a helpful message from Rev. Jackson Day.
Susan Dewey-Hammer recommends an excellent resource from The Partnership Center, one of many on their website. Please don’t miss out on this!
Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!
Yours in service to Christ,
Deaconess Sharon McCart, Chair, MHTF
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In it for the Long-Haul: A COVID Long-Hauler and Hope Against a Virus |
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In March 2020, I do not think that we could have predicted where we are today. With hopes that worldwide shelter-in-place practices would stop the spread of the virus, many people believed the pandemic would be dangerous and deadly but short-lived. Yet we find ourselves still in the middle of a raging viral pandemic. Over 800,000 people have died from infection just in the United States, and many of these deaths were avoidable. Furthermore, a recent study from The University of Washington shows that over 30% of COVID patients become known as COVID Long-Haulers, experiencing persistent symptoms from infection for months on end. The day the world shut down, I was diagnosed, and I still have lingering symptoms now 18 months later. While I have been fighting for my life and health these last 18 months, others have been fighting for hope.
If you can, remember March 2020. When things first shut down, how did you feel? Scared? Confused? Exposed? Alienated? Comforted? Empowered to respond? Longing for a way to support people in our communities who could not work from home? Did you help organize car parades or evenings of applause and cheers? Were you suddenly making masks for friends, family, and strangers alike? From what little of the early weeks of the pandemic response that I remember - brain fog is real and has been very frustrating - it seemed like people experienced these feelings and many more, that many worked to support our healthcare workers, and that many cared for those neighbors who were most susceptible to the virus. We had so much hope back then. What happened?
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Impatience, fatigue, jealousy, greed, and a host of other vices could be or have been blamed. I think we lost our courage, we lost our heart of life for one another. This is courage in the old sense of “taking heart,” of being aware of who you are and how you contribute to the good of the community and then acting on the deep relationships of the self-in-community. As I write this, the Delta variant continues to infect people across the country. There were beautiful and courageous stories of care, of people beating the virus, of case numbers going down, and of vaccine development with tens of thousands of people volunteering to participate in clinical trials. Yet the hope we had to eradicate the virus seems lost because of persistent reactionary groups who have actively opposed public health practices like masks and vaccinations out of a dangerously twisted sense of “freedom.”
Hope, courage, and freedom are connected theological values for us as Christians, and the long haul of waning hope and courage in the face of the pandemic have highlighted this for me. The freedom that Jesus offers in abundant life is not freedom from the interconnected web of life in our world. Christian freedom is freedom for love. It is freedom to live as God’s partners in loving and creating a world of holy justice, of beauty, of wellbeing, of shalom. Through Christ, we are free to live with hearts for one another, free to live courageously.
When we live courageously, we are given a precious opportunity to hope and work for a world that is characterized by God’s reign of love and wellbeing. Hope and courage are woven together as we journey deeper into God’s love, and they embolden each new act. Freed for love, we are called by God to live for one another, hoping for a world where that is the norm instead of selfishness, greed, and fear of the other. Hoping for a new world, we are encouraged by the Spirit to work with God to make it so. Working to make it so, we recognize in fresh ways how we have been freed to love one another.
What we are experiencing in the long haul of waning hope and courage is collective trauma that will require collective healing. It may be hard for you to hope, to be courageous, to feel free for love. I do not promise a quick fix for this because my experiences with Christ have revealed a holy commitment to the slow, beautiful, and communal work of love-in-action. Loving one another as God loves us will require work because we have a new world to build that is characterized by courageous hope. Let us join God and one another in this work. Let us seek to live for one another again, knowing that we are never alone in the love of God.
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Contributed by Rev. Corrie Hermans-Webster, New England Conference.
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3 He was despised and avoided by others;
a man who suffered, who knew sickness well.
Like someone from whom people hid their faces,
he was despised, and we didn’t think about him.
4 It was certainly our sickness that he carried,
and our sufferings that he bore,
but we thought him afflicted,
struck down by God and tormented.
5 He was pierced because of our rebellions
and crushed because of our crimes.
He bore the punishment that made us whole;
by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53: 3-5 (CEB)
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As Christians, our ultimate wounded healer is our Savior, Jesus Christ. He endured and suffered wounds on our behalf and then paid the ultimate sacrifice of his life. Although Isaiah is in the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament), through Christian lenses this prophetic passage gives us insight as to what was to come in the man/God of Jesus. But the “wounded healer” concept has been pondered by ordinary people, theologians, psychologists, and philosophers for thousands of years. The late Henri Nouwen popularized the term for modern Christians. He was a Dutch-born Catholic priest turned psychologist and writer who authored 39 books about spirituality. The most well-known and celebrated is The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (1979, Crown Publishers).
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Nouwen struggled with mental illness, most notably depression, which led him to continue studies in psychology after he entered the priesthood. A quote from The Wounded Healer gives us a glimpse into his insights:
"Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift for others, especially when we have received good care. As long as our wounds are open and bleeding, we scare others away. But after someone has carefully tended to our wounds, they no longer frighten us or others. When we experience the healing presence of another person, we can discover our own gifts of healing. Then our wounds allow us to enter into a deep solidarity with our wounded brothers and sisters."
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We live in a broken world, and we suffer from physical, mental, and emotional wounds of all sorts. Our wounds and weaknesses might be our hurts, resentments, and fears. They could relate to forgiveness—both forgiving ourselves and others. The rawness of open wounds eventually goes away, but some scars remain. We can find solace and comfort in knowing that through our past experiences we can offer healing accompaniment to others as they suffer through fresh wounds. Our scars can help us join others in their pain and enable us to offer empathy, understanding and compassion. We are wounded healers. What will you do to help another based on the wounds you’ve experienced?
God doesn’t seek perfect and unscarred people to serve. He seeks those who are willing to love and to offer compassion and hope to hurting people in spite of their wounds. Let us not waste our weaknesses, failures, and past trauma. Instead, let us allow God to use our woundedness and the process of our healing to equip us for service toward others.
Contributed by Rev. Tiffanie Lyon, MBA, MDiv; Provisional Deacon and Hospital Staff Chaplain, Louisiana conference
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Mental Health First Aid Training |
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Mental Health First Aid is an excellent course for people who want to help in mental health crises until professional help arrives. Several Mental Health Task Force members have been trained and are so impressed by it that we are working to become trainers so that we can train others.
About 20% of the population will face a mental health challenge each year, according to the U.S. Surgeon General. People in your community and very likely within your congregation have mental illness of some kind. This training will help you be more effective at meeting the needs of those around you. Just like First Aid and CPR training, the objective is to help until someone more highly trained can be called in. The training includes learning to de-escalate a situation, help the person to call for help themselves, keep someone safe, and more. It also addresses addiction.
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The basic training usually costs under $50 and includes a helpful manual that you will want to keep for reference. We encourage all of you to take this training. Learn more and find training sources at the Mental Health First Aid website.
More than that, we encourage you to become a trainer so that you can train the congregations in your area so that as many United Methodist churches as possible are equipped to serve the people in your community who have mental illness. They need to know that God still loves them even when they have problems.
While we have no budget to help you with the $2200 train-the-trainer course, which takes place over three days on-line, we are aware that some annual conferences have sponsored people for this training. We also believe that there are churches, individuals, and UMW units who will understand the value of this training and want to help. We have fundraising letters and other information available. Let us know you are interested or ask me questions at the DMC email address. Please put “Mental Health” in the subject line.
Let’s get our church members trained in this crucial response to mental health emergencies!
Contributed by Deaconess Sharon McCart, California-Pacific Conference
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The Clergy Role is not to be a Therapist!
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Sometimes it can be tempting to think that a course like Mental Health First Aid will turn clergy into therapists! Hopefully, the phrase “First Aid” will correct any such impression.
The truth is that the roles of clergy and therapist are very different. Therapists focus entirely on the wellbeing a particular client, while clergy are engaged in multiple roles. The person who shares a confidence with you on Monday may be the person you consider for Sunday School leadership on Tuesday and the person bringing congregational concerns about you to the Staff Parish Relations Committee on Wednesday. No matter how well trained you are, as clergy you are balancing multiple expectations, while, as a matter of ethics therapists avoid such potential conflicting roles. If you have a chance to ask someone who is qualified both as clergy and as pastoral psychotherapist about these roles they will tell you, “I can do one or the other, but not both at the same time and same place.”
Contributed by Rev. Jackson Day, D. Min, MPH, Baltimore-Washington Conference
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New Resource: Compassion in Action Guide |
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The Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships of the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services (also called The Partnership Center) provides faith-based organizations with access to resources, information and encouragement to address serious mental illness. In 2020 they published Compassion in Action: A Guide for Faith Communities Serving People Experiencing Mental Illness and Their Caregivers. The Guide was created by faith and community-based organizations, entrepreneurs, providers, caregivers, and mental health agencies.
This is a well-written 43-page document based on the following seven Principles of Compassion in Action:
- We affirm the inherent dignity of every person.
- We acknowledge mental illness as an illness.
- We understand mental illness impacts families and caregivers.
- We know mental illness requires professional assistance.
- We encourage participating in recommended psychiatric treatment, including therapy, and as necessary, medication.
- We understand mental illness can be a challenging, life-long journey.
- We recognize and celebrate that people with mental illness can get better.
The Guide includes explanations; practical exercises, and an extensive collection of resources.
I recommend that you read the Guide and keep it as a reference.
Contributed by Susan Dewey-Hammer, New York Conference
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Please address correspondence to the DMC email address and write "Mental Health" in the subject line. We would love to hear from you!
Disability Ministries Committee of The United Methodist Church
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