My journey to pursuing a dual degree in mental health and theology and ministry
During my senior year of college, I was a peer minister. As a thank you gift at the end of the year the student president and vice president of Campus Ministry got all of the student leaders, including myself, a saint medal. They had hand-picked a saint for each one of us that they felt represented our ministry. I remember being so excited to see who they had picked for me. I quickly unwrapped the small package and found the saint medal for Saint Dymphna. I was initially a little surprised because I felt that everyone else was getting a medal for a saint that matched their ministry and I could not fully understand why I was given the patron saint of those suffering from mental afflictions and nervousness.
I honestly did not know who Saint Dymphna was until a few months before receiving her medal. During the winter break of my senior year, I had a crippling anxiety attack over my upcoming graduation and had no idea what I would be doing in a year. I began to slowly recover from my anxiety attack but my mental health was fragile to put it gently as I returned for my final semester of undergrad. I knew that I would not be able to make it through the semester without talking to people and I quickly turned to the chaplains and campus ministers as I was closest to them. Everyone was supportive of me but I remember one conversation with a chaplain in particular. I told him that I felt guilty because when my anxiety was bad I would forget to pray or I was unable to focus at mass and the list went on and on with ways I felt like I was failing as a Catholic because of my anxiety. I was fully expecting him to affirm my fears and tell me I should try harder to remember to pray. Instead, he looked at me with compassion and told me that I should not be so hard on myself. He reminded me that I am doing my best and that God knows that and does not blame me for these struggles so I should not blame myself. I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders as that comment sunk in and for the first time in months I felt my mental health was seen in the Church.
So as I share this story it probably seems obvious why my peers had picked Saint Dymphna as the saint that best represented my ministry. But the truth is, neither of them knew about my anxiety attack. They had noticed me guiding the students in my group towards good mental health practices and to the school counseling center as needed. As I held the medal of Saint Dymphna, I believed that was how my ministry as an aspiring campus minister would include mental health. Sharing my story and then guiding others to trained professionals. I then went off with that mission in mind to do a year of service as a campus minister in New Jersey.
It was in this role that I found the Church can do a whole lot more with mental health and I found my calling that led me to pursue a dual degree in Theology and Ministry and Mental Health Counseling. As a campus minister, I had almost half of the students I worked with come to me with some form of mental health concern. I talked with them but most of the time guided them to the school’s counseling services. I wanted to support them while they were seeing professionals, so I decided to incorporate good mental health practices into one of my programs but I found very little research or resources on how to combine faith and mental health in a positive way. My frustration led me to feel like I needed to do more. So I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, and I started looking at graduate programs. I thought I would need to decide between a theology degree or a mental health counseling degree before I found Boston College. Now that I am finished with my second year of the program, I wanted to share some resources to help those working in a faith-based setting better address the crippling mental health crisis that has been around for years but has been heightened by the pandemic.
Resources to address mental health for those working in a faith-based setting
As a disclaimer, I am still a student and am not a licensed counselor. This list is based on my experience but if you are worried about someone please seek professional help. This list is meant to help raise awareness and support for mental health needs and not to provide treatment.
1. Talk about mental health.
There is a stigma around mental health. Many people feel isolated and like they are alone when they have a crisis. Shame often comes along with mental health and it prevents people from seeking help because they don’t want anyone to know. It can even go as far as people thinking they did something to cause this and in a religious sense, some people even believe that God is punishing them for something, both of these things are not true. Talking about mental health breaks the stigma. As a minister talking about mental health lets the people you serve know they can come to you. It also lets them know that they are not alone and that there are probably others in the community also going through something similar. Talking about mental health can be in a homily or a sermon, through an event at a parish or campus ministry center, and even in the conversations that you have with people. Just talk about mental health.
2. Have referrals ready.
Unless you are a trained professional you should not be diagnosing or treating anyone. Your job is to walk with someone on their mental health journey and one of the best ways to do that is knowing when you need to refer them to a professional. To paraphrase a lovely statement from Professor Melissa Kelley, the time to find referrals is before you need them, not when you have someone in crisis sitting in your office. Reach out to different mental health providers and see if you can find some in the area that has a spiritual base to their practice and also some that do not. If you work in a larger community like a college campus or hospital, know what services are available to the population you work with. Have a few options so that when someone comes to you in need you are ready to respond to them in love and get them the help they deserve. The key is to have them ready to go so that the person you are caring for does not have to wait. Maybe even consider making one of these connections a clinical consultant to reach out to when you are not sure if someone needs professional help.
3. Familiarize yourself with online resources
There are so many online resources that are super helpful. There are also a lot that are not based on facts so do your research before relying on a particular source too heavily. One site that I recommend as being a good place to start is the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). NAMI has resources for people with mental illness and family members of someone with mental illness, education resources, support group resources, advocacy information, and more. One of my favorite things is that they have resources for you to start a support group within your community both for those with mental health needs and for family members of someone with a mental health disorder. You could start this in your parish, campus ministry program, or whatever community you work in with very little work on your end after finding a space and a good member of your community to be a leader.
4. Introduce people to Saint Dymphna and have other prayer services or intentions for mental health
The National Institute for Mental Illness reported that 59.2 million Americans were living with a mental illness in 2020 which is almost 1 in 5 Americans. This means that if you are ministering to more than 5 people, someone you are serving is living with a mental illness. The number is probably higher now because this data was from the beginning of the pandemic and only counting people who have been diagnosed and sought treatment. So having something in your ministry to serve as a faith resource will help them spiritually but also help end the stigma. Easy ways to do this could be having saint cards for Saint Dymphna available to hand out, adding a prayer intention for those living with mental illness and their families, or posting a prayer to Saint Dymphna on your parish website or program’s social media. A little more involved would be hosting a prayer service or candle light vigil for mental illness. My undergraduate college celebrated mental health awareness in October and the vigil campus ministry sponsored was always well attended. Even finding someone in your community that will take this project on since oftentimes your personal bandwidth is already stretched thin.
5. Read The Church Leader’s Counseling Resource Book: A Guide to Mental Health and Social Problems by Cynthia Franklin and Rowena Fong
This book is a fantastic resource to have on your shelf to help you help those you are serving. I have not read this book yet, but it has been highly recommended to me by many people that I trust. I will be reading it at some point soon once I am done with summer classes!
6. Consider getting trained in how to ministerially respond to mental health crises.
If you are a student at the CSTM, take a Pastoral Care and Counseling class. If you are not at the CSTM, look for different organizations local to you that address pastoral counseling like the workshops offered by Columbia Theological Seminary in Family Systems Theory (thank you to Melissa Kelley for introducing me to this resource). It might take a little work to find something in your area but it is worth it if you can.