LIMA — According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five Americans live with a mental health condition, and people of faith are not excluded from that number. For this reason, churches must be proactive in learning about these conditions and how to properly respond to people affected by them.
That was the message at a forum held Thursday at the City Club in Lima. A joint effort by the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board of Allen, Auglaize and Hardin Counties, Allen County Public Health’s Health Ministries Program and Lima UMADAOP, the forum was designed as an outreach to the faith community, to enlighten them on issues surrounding mental health.
“You guys are on the front lines,” Mental Health Executive Director Michael Schoenhofer said to attendees. “So many things can be handled in a really fast way on that level, and people trust their ministers and folks at the church to know when things need to move to the next level. We want to make sure you can reach out and make sure people know that help is near.”
Speaking at the forum was Rachelle Martin, executive director of NAMI Franklin County in Columbus. Her outreaches to the faith community in Columbus was started thanks to funding from NAMI Ohio.
“NAMI Franklin County took up the initiative of bringing mental illness out of the shadows and into the church,” she said. “We started this initiative about educating church leaders, because sitting next to them in the pew could be someone who is hurting with a mental illness, and the church has not recognized it, nor have they done anything about it.”
Part of that lack of engagement, according to Martin, is the notion that the issues mentally ill people have are strictly spiritual, rather than having a root in biology.
“There’s a huge stigma in the church because they think it can be prayed out,” she said. “This is a disease. It’s just like a heart disease or cancer. This is a disease of the brain, and we want to take that stigma away and know that there’s help for these people.”
That help can be found in a variety of places, Martin said.
“There is a NAMI here in your community,” she said. “They can invite [churches] in and get them involved with doing education so they can make a difference with their parishioners.”
To learn more about available NAMI programs, NAMI Hope Alliance serves Allen, Auglaize and Hardin Counties and can be contacted by calling 419-692-2480.
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