Faith Community and Mental Health Workshops for Faith Leaders—Join the Team Today!
A faith community may be the first place an individual or family with mental health needs seeks help. Does it seem that all faith communities—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.—have a clear understanding of mental health challenges and are completely welcoming to families dealing with these challenges? Have they eradicated stigma? If your answer is NO, you are absolutely right! Congregations and other faith groups are not unwilling, but they do need education and experience to create compassionate cultures of inclusion for all. NAMI has much to offer. Families and individuals with mental health needs crave understanding and open conversation in a caring and knowledgeable environment.
To address this, the NAMI Central Middlesex Faith Communities and Mental Health (FC&MH) team has offered 3 workshops in the last 4 years for leaders of all faiths in our area. Those took place in churches in Bedford, Burlington, and Cambridge. In each workshop the team shared essential information on mental health, stories from lived experience, and opportunities to discuss and share ideas with leaders from a variety of neighboring faith communities. Attendees have reported very positively on the opportunity to problem-solve relative to challenging real-life scenarios that often occur in communities of faith. Each attendee has gone back to their home faith group with new enthusiasm and ideas for their next steps.
The FC&MH team needs some additional volunteers to help produce these programs. Several faith leaders have come to us hoping for a workshop in 2024 or 2025. We want to say, “Yes!” but we need more volunteers. As a member of NAMI, you are well-equipped to help. The team is also looking for additional NAMI In Our Own Voice (IOOV) speakers, mental health professionals, and interested clergy to complete the details of each program. If your faith community has helped in your or your loved one’s recovery or if you’d like to belong to a faith community that really understands, then this is a team to join! Right now, we are actively meeting individuals who are interested in joining. You can be one of them!
The team at work during our 2023 Faith Communities and Mental Health presentation
On the FC&MH team for 2024 are Chais DiMaggio, a pastor at Burlington Church of Christ; Bruce Hoppe, a NAMI In Our Own Voice speaker; Judy McKendry, a long-term member of NAMI Central Middlesex Board; Becky Hadden, the former editor of NAMI CMSX newsletter The Bridge; and Jennifer Stuart, MDiv and LICSW. Past team members have been Jennie Payne, Jennifer Morazes, Elaine Gleason, and Phyllis Terrey, all of whom have done much to bring this program to such success. For each of these people, their faith holds a very important role in their hearts and knowledge relative to recovery. By creating a forum in which members of faith groups can think, share, learn, and grow, we are opening a new avenue for anyone touched by challenges in mental health.
The key topics emphasized in each forum have been knowledge on mental health/illness, clarity about common myths, strategies for building a caring inclusive culture in a faith community, and references for ongoing faith and mental health education and growth. After a faith community gets comfortable with the topic of mental health issues, they can invite NAMI IOOV speakers to tell their stories. A service or meeting can include a talk by people who are NAMI members or speakers for NAMI Sharing our Stories. Members may participate in NAMIWalks or other NAMI activities. They may caringly sit down with people having personal styles or thoughts that are very new to them. Walking alongside a person with mental health challenges is a form of companionship, which can be a deeply compassionate way of giving support to a community member. Everyone gains in a faith community of this kind. Please consider joining.
Contact us at nami.cmsx@gmail.com if you would like to talk about this opportunity.