Today I want to talk about how
we can be radically inclusive and welcoming to those who struggle with mental and
emotional health issues. What’s the most
affirming and least derogatory way we can even bring this subject up? I don’t think any of us would want to be
referred to as mentally ill, nor would anyone who struggles with their mental
or emotional health. This is not
language that helps a person with mental or emotional health issues feel very
welcome. Some folks prefer language like
mental health consumer, user of mental health services, person with a mental
health history or a person with mental health issues. Some people who have been diagnosed, prefer a
person with the such and such diagnosis, for instance a person with the
diagnosis schizophrenia rather than being labeled a schizophrenic. I remember when I first started working as an
aide at a psychiatric hospital back in 1979, a young man was admitted who had
the diagnosis of schizophrenia. One day
I sat down with him to talk. He said to
me that he had no reason to take any responsibility for his life because
everyone had labeled him a schizophrenic.
He was seen as an illness, an aberration, boxed up, labeled, and shelved
under a category with specific expectations of how he will think and
behave. So he was just going to do
whatever he wanted and to heck with everyone else. His family was aware of his do-whatever
attitude and very concerned about this young man, but continued to call him a
schizophrenic, not realizing how the label was contributing to the issues that
he faced. A diagnosis is not who the
person is, it is a diagnosis. It makes
me wonder what other labels we use that are not helpful, like being labeled a
diabetic rather than a person with diabetes.
Labels seem very black and white; like once you have been labeled there
is no going back to just being a plain old person.
According to one study 55%
of the respondents reported that churches are widely perceived by outsiders,
people who don’t attend a church, to be unwelcoming places for persons with
mental or emotional issues. (research done by Life Way Research in 2013, Mental Health and
Christian Churches) And there is
probably some truth to that. In my 15
years as a Unitarian Universalist minister, I have heard stories from
ministerial colleagues about parents saying that their
depressed/bipolar/anxious child was not very welcomed by the teachers or the
other kids in the religious education program.
This is an issue that is routinely raised in different UU churches
across the country. And even though I
think many of our congregations are trying to be more sensitive to issues like
this, I think we still have much to learn about how to be welcoming to people
with mental or emotional health issues.
The same study I mentioned
earlier, found that the response of people in church to an individual’s mental or
emotional health issues caused 18% to break ties with a church and 5% to fail
to find any church to attend. And 17% of
family members in a household of someone with acute mental illness reported
that their family member’s mental or emotional health issues impacted which
church their family chose to attend. One
more statistic from the study: 65 % of church going families with a member with
a mental health diagnosis want their church to talk more openly about mental health
issues. (research done by Life Way Research in 2013, Mental Health and
Christian Churches)
One
in five people has some sort of mental or emotional health issue (NAMI). According to this statistic it is very likely
some people in this room have struggled with mental or emotional health issues. And yet how often do we talk about mental and
emotional health? We do some. A few classes offered by our Pastoral Care
Ministers, but probably do not do it enough.
And how do we support our members and friends with mental and emotional
health issues? In my time here we have
tried our best, sometimes more successful than others, to support our members
and friends with mental and emotional health issues. Is there more we can do?
Here
is one of the conundrums we face in trying to be more welcoming to visitors to
this church with mental or emotional health issues, we may never know if a
person is a consumer of mental health services, because they may not feel safe
sharing that part of themselves, or they may not hear this congregation talking
about mental or emotional health issues.
Mental or emotional health issues are generally very difficult to recognize. Wheelchairs and walkers are easy to see, but
you cannot see if a person is taking an anti-depressant. And someone who has a mental or emotional
health issue has to hide it in the world outside our walls, so they are
unlikely to talk about it until they trust that this is a safe place for them
to talk about it. You see many people with
mental or emotional health issues face stigma and real discrimination in the
world outside this church. When I was a
psychotherapist, I saw many active military personnel and commercial
pilots. These people always paid for
their sessions in cash. They didn’t want
anyone to know that they were seeking help, because of the chance that their
livelihood would be taken away from them was pretty high. And they were afraid to take any medication
because if anyone found out or it showed up in their systems they would be
discharged or their licenses revoked. It’s
been several years since I’ve practiced psychotherapy, but I’m pretty sure
these continue to be real issues today. I
strongly feel I would rather have a pilot who is receiving mental health care
when he/she/they need it, rather than one who doesn’t get the help they need.
And there is still real
stigma out there. Imagine moving into a
new house in a new neighborhood, and your neighbors discover you have a
diagnosis of "psychosis." What do you think might happen? The myths about mental health issues feed the
stigmas and are deeply entrenched in our culture. Some of the myths are: people who are mental
health consumers are dangerous, mental instability is evidence of character
flaws or weakness, the mentally or emotionally impaired have nothing of value
to offer to society. And it is all too
often that I hear people wondering if mental health issues are contagious, if being
around someone who is depressed will make you depressed.
___________________________________________
These are passages from An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods
and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison.
Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins School of Medicine
and has been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder or what used to be called Manic
Depressive Disorder.
“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed
because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with
someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead,
is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide
being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to,
and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond
belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical
and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're
frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon,"
but you know you won't.”
“No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark
moods. [But] Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable…”
____________________________________________
In an Unquiet Mind by
Kay Redfield Jamison, you hear her speak of a couple of problems that people
with mental or emotional health issues and those who want to help or support
them face: a difficulty in communicating and a struggle with empathy. I can’t emphasize enough that saying to
someone who is going through a difficult time that you understand what they are
going through is not helpful. Really the
only way you can begin to understand what person is going through is to ask
them. Your role then is listening and
asking questions of clarification to help you understand what the person is
saying to you while being careful not to be intrusive. And doing this with a loving spirit,
expressing interest, and demonstrating a willingness to be with them. Not to offer helpful suggestions. Not to try to “fix” them. Your role is to listen and engage with them
in a loving, non-judging, supportive way. This may sound familiar because this
is what our Pastoral Ministry Associates do when they visit a person who is in
distress. And here’s one other thing,
you don’t have to be perfect with your language or in your listening skills,
you just have to be willing to try to understand and continue to show them
lovingkindness even when the person you are talking to says something like,
“You know I really don’t like it when you use the term mental illness. I wish you wouldn’t use it when you are
talking with me.” Don’t react
defensively. Listen and show them
respect.
You
heard Steve Cooper earlier mention our Accessibility and Inclusion Ministry. They are exploring how we can make this
church more welcoming to all people who join us. But I wondered how other Unitarian
Universalist Churches are trying to be more welcoming to people with mental and
emotional health issues. I found Mission
Peak UU Congregation in Freemont California; they have a Mental Health
Ministry. The mission of this ministry is compassionate service to people with
mental health challenges and to their families, within and beyond the walls of their
congregation. On their website they have
a link to a Caring Congregations Curriculum developed by their community
minister Rev. Barbara F. Meyers. This
curriculum aims to help congregations be more welcoming and includes a guide
called: Resources for Welcoming and Supporting those with Mental Disorders and
their Families Into Our Congregations.
What was particularly interesting to me was that Reverend Barbara felt
it was necessary to start the curriculum with definitions of religion and
spirituality. She wrote: “The terms
‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ both have many meanings, and there is sometimes a
distinction made between them. For the purposes of this curriculum, we define
‘religion’ as: An ongoing process of restoring personal wholeness. In a more
universal sense it is the process of restoring one's relationship with the
world, with the universe, with Ultimate Reality, the Sacred, or God, however
conceived. ‘Spirituality’ we define as:
a form of religion, but a private and personal form of religion, that which a
person feels internally that relates them to the sacred [as they understand
it].” I thought this was interesting
that defining these two terms took precedence over getting to the nuts and
bolts of welcoming and supporting those with mental and emotional issues and
their families into the congregation. I
can only speculate on this, but it seems to me that presenting these
definitions is another way of being welcoming.
You see the definitions offer hope.
No guarantees of healing, just the hope that with a loving and
supportive Unitarian Universalist religious community walking beside them, that
a person with a mental or emotional health issue may find a path to personal
wholeness.
Within
this curriculum are recommendations on how to help people with mental or
emotional health issues feel that they are part of the church community by including
them in decision-making, encouraging them to join committees, offering them
positions in leadership; all this empowering them to be active members of the
church community. The curriculum also addresses
how a church can provide ongoing mental health education and mental health
community resources to church members and the community. Another aspect of the curriculum discusses
how important justice work for mental health issues is—from lobbying to
speaking up in social situations when a person with mental health issues is
harassed. The curriculum mentions some things
that make a person with mental health issues feel unwelcome: minimizing the
severity of a mental or emotional illness, questioning the validity of a
specific diagnosis, and questioning the legitimacy of licensed professionals.
Each
person who joins us wants to experience us as a welcoming community that can be
a spiritual home to them. I believe that
each person who walks in our doors needs something specific to make them feel truly
and deeply welcomed. And we will only
know what that is if we ask, and then listen to what they have to say. We may not be perfect at meeting the
welcoming needs of every person who joins us, but I don’t think we need to be
perfect. We just need to be authentic
and make a good faith effort.
So as we continue this
journey together, may we welcome all those who wish to join us, understanding that
anyone who joins us will bring value and worth into this community. So let’s travel light, bringing with us the
spirit of love and expectation and our hopes and dreams as we bear witness to
the future breaking in. Come along with me sojourner, seeker, pilgrim secure in
the knowledge that we never travel alone; we are here with and for one another.