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WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY
"I am tired of being talked about, treated as a statistic, pushed to the margins of human conversation. I want someone who will have time for me, someone who will listen to me, someone who has not already judged who I am or what I have to offer."
10th October is World Mental Health Day - a day when we are challenged to engage with the quite complex issue of mental health, and to consider how welcoming we in the churches are to people with mental health problems.
Churches - both buildings and people - can be a real sanctuary for people who have experienced mental distress. They can be places of tranquillity and welcome, places where people are valued for their true selves, loved and accepted without judgment for what and who they are.
But more than this - churches can also learn from people with severe and enduring mental health problems. People who have experiences real suffering, who have been challenged in their faith who have been angry with God, and who have known - and survived - despair, have much to teach us. By welcoming people with experience of mental distress into our midst, we may learn something about our own faith too.
"Inner fragmentation, a sense of inner disturbance …. which made it difficult to function in a normal sense, but which, once I stayed with and got myself more grounded was then later very valuable in terms of knowing about myself and indeed other people."
"God became a friend who got me through…. he put up with loads of things and got me through again and again."
Many of us feel that we would be better equipped to engage with people with mental health problems if we know or understand more about mental health issues. There is plenty of opportunity to do so in the Diocese, through study days, workshops or informal teaching and discussion sessions.
For more information, please contact:
Wendy Bryant, Mental Health Advisor, Department for Social Responsibility.
Tel: 01483 790 327,
e-mail: wendy.bryant@cofeguildford.org.uk
"All quotations are from mental health service users in the Somerset Spirituality Project "Taken Seriously", published by the Mental Health Foundation, 2002.
A prayer for World Mental Health Day.
Lord of the excluded,
Open my eyes to those I would prefer not to see,
Open my life to those I would prefer not to know,
Open my heart to those I would prefer not to love,
And so open my eyes to see
Where I exclude you. Amen
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