Next May will mark my 30 year anniversary in the professional counseling world. I often joke with my new clients as I am going over informed consent and explain I have been counseling since 1997 that doesn’t make me an expert, just old. Approximately 10 years ago when I reached the 20 year mark I learned to never say I have “heard everything.” I made the statement that I had heard probably everything under the sun of what a client has been through and then the next week I had a new client that blew that out of the water. I was told things that had happened to them that one would only think would happen in a fictional horror flick.
May is Mental Health Awareness month and each week there is a theme. Week one is “Understanding Mental Illness and how understanding and awareness leads to compassion.” Some of the key points that are listed on SAMHSA website to promote are:
Mental illness are medical conditions involving changes in emotion, appetite, thinking, or behaviors that can impede one’s daily living. This also will impact how those affected deal with others; family and people in general. Mental health issues can interfere with how one does at school or work, self-care, causing issues in dealing with “normal everyday stresses,” and can increase feelings of guilt and shame for not being able to just “snap out of it” and even if they are “people of faith” be made to feel that if they just had “more faith” then maybe they would be better.
I was actually shocked when I saw part of the theme from SAMHSA which is The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a US department of health and human services agency made available to repost online information that says these various statements, “Faith supports Healing,” “Hope, Healing, and Help are within Reach,” “Connections in (Faith Communities ie Church) is a powerful form of care,” and encouragement to take care of our “Mind, Body, and Spirit.”
It should be no surprise that when the “world” catches up to the truth of God’s Word and promotes what Christ already has set an example for us to do. Throughout the Bible and particularly the Gospels that tells of Jesus’ earthly ministry before He did any form of ministry He was “moved with compassion” to heal the sick, feed the hungry, shepherd a lost people, and help comfort those grieving loss.
Being in the counseling profession and in the faith based world of ministry I have all too often heard clients tell of the unfortunate experience of being told by someone in a leadership position of a church or even a family member that if that just “had more faith” they wouldn’t have mental or emotional health issues and should never be on meds for it. I tell them to look up Christian Comedian Chonda Pierce as she would say, “Tell them to stop taking all their medications for their physical health issues and take their glasses off and drive home.” (To Be Continued)
~TRS 5-3-26
Rays of Hope 