Depression lies.
It convinces you, ‘“My friends don’t want to be around me.” “I’ll just bring everyone else down.” “I am not worthy of having friends.” “Nobody likes me anymore.”
When you are depressed, making and keeping friends can be a challenge. But research shows that a group of positive friends makes a difference.
There’s an Elephant in the sanctuary! And pastors need to see this video to help them realize how serious their lack of understanding is regarding mental illness. Why? Because more people go first to a clergy than to their doctor, a therapist, a psychologist and/or psychiatrist combined! Pastors are on the front lines of the mental health crisis! Please watch this video and share it on social media, it’s one way to begin to address the “elephant” in the sanctuary!
Research shows that when those of us with mental health challenges have a good support system of family and friends, we actually do better than those who do not have a support system. It only makes sense. After all, as it is with any challenges in life, we all do better with the support of family and friends. The support of my wife, family, and close friends was key in encouraging me and helping me to learning to live well in spite of having a bipolar disorder.
When you and I connect with one another, we empower each other to live well in spite of any possible daily battles with our disorder. Individually, no one of us has all the answers. But, together we have solutions for one another. Corporately we have answers for one another as we encourage each other and share what “works” for us as individuals in living well in spite of our bipolar disorder.
The loss of yet another pastor to suicide this week was not a surprise to me. Why? Because handling the challenges of modern-day ministry and
After an initial diagnosis of depression, the best thing you can do is become informed, for you and your child. Jumo Health, a digital health resource for families, offers a depression discussion guide which provides questions to help foster conversation with a doctor after a diagnosis.
Being focused is essential for getting a lot of different types of tasks done in this life. However, sometimes being intensely focused or “stuck” in our thinking about something is not good and we end up needing to be distracted from it. We need to be interrupted! There are times we can become intensely focused, ruminating over and over on something negative. It’s at that point that we need to interrupt and distract our thinking.
One of four families in our churches are dealing with a member with a mental health diagnosis. There are many kinds of mental illness, like depression, anorexia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or PTSD. There are several categorizes for these illnesses as well. Everyone’s experience is different. Each person’s illness has different symptoms. What are some of misconceptions we make about mental illness?
As they say, “The only thing that never changes is change.” Life is full of changes. Some changes that we make, others make, or life makes for us. Some changes we like; others we do not. Change is unavoidable.
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