Mental Health and Your Church

Knowing enough to help is really helpful. The church has a key role in supporting and welcoming people with mental health difficulties. To do so alongside the NHS means the church needs to know "enough" – not too much for we are not competing; but not nothing for there are past errors of over-spiritualising we can learn from. This book delivers just the right amount and then wraps it in a Biblical model to integrate this with our faith and see real change. Helpful indeed! | I am so grateful for this outstanding and timely book. Every church will benefit from reading it in book groups, as individuals, and in pastoral teams. The writing is warm, soaked in grace and informed by years of caring, listening, and loving. The content is intensely and realistically practical: I look forward to reading it again and learning to put it into practice. | We are at last beginning to talk about mental health in our churches, so, I’m encouraged to see this new contribution to a crucial conversation. Helen Thorne and Steve Midgely bring both compassion and practical wisdom as they help us to think through the practicalities of mental health and mental illness for the church family, both for those suffering and those seeking to care for them. The book includes a helpful overview of mental health, diagnosis, treatment and care. It provides lots of practical suggestions for how we can care for others all of which are centred on a Gospel understanding of the person and their ultimate need for Christ. An important resource for every church to have in its library. | Steve and Helen have achieved the seemingly impossible task of taking a complex issue and framing it for a local church audience. This book brims with a helpful distillation of mental health—terms, definitions, explanations—while also presenting the beauty and depth of the gospel. Readers will be educated, encouraged, equipped, and edified for the privilege of caring for souls. | This book is vital and timely. All of us, whether active church members or in more formal leadership, need help to understand mental health and show love, care and compassion to those who struggle. I wish I had this help thirty years ago; I’m glad I have it now. It’s easy to read, insightful in content and thoughtful in application. It’s especially encouraging to read how a healthy local church community can be a help and blessing to those in need and that the approaches needed are within reach of every Spirit-filled believer. Helen and Steve’s book is now on my ‘essential reading’ list. | Instructive, compassionate, encouraging, and informative. This is a timely, significant, and much-needed book for church members and church leaders. Awareness of our own mental health is growing and some struggle more than others with the severity of mental illness. This book highlights we are in the struggle together. In church community we don’t need to awkwardly shy away as those who want to support others but aren’t sure how or feel isolated and alone when we suffer. Wisdom is provided to understand complexities of diagnosis, medications, and therapies. Sensitive worked case studies of supporting those with depression, anxiety, psychosis and caring for those who care for the sufferer are insightful. What makes this book unique is the biblical fuel alongside practical help to persevere in care for one another in our brokenness, knowing that through Christ, in heaven, there will be complete restoration and no more suffering. | I have had mental health problems for a long time and have sat with countless others who do too. I found this a really helpful book and would strongly encourage pastors and those in pastorally supportive roles in churches to read it. | What can ordinary Christians do to help fellow church members who struggle with mental illness? A great deal, according to Thorne and Midgley. Without sidestepping the important roles of mental health care professionals and medications, they highlight, through worked examples, what the church can and should do to become a welcoming, wise, Christ-centered community for strugglers. | What a brilliant resource! In Mental Health and Your Church, Thorne and Midgley bring compassion, intelligence, biblical wisdom and practical help to bear on this most difficult of topics. Combining exceptional clarity of thought with real-life case examples, their book empowers readers to offer genuine Christian hope and help to those struggling with mental health challenges. | As one who has suffered with my own mental health in recent years I am utterly delighted that Helen and Steve have written this book, which is all that I hoped it would be and much more! Full of wisdom, warmth, compassion and masses of practical help-it left me full of hope and rejoicing at how the Lord delights to equip and use the whole of his church to walk together, in love, with those who are struggling with their mental health. I will be strongly encouraging every member of my church to get hold of a copy! | This is a much-needed book that is beautiful in its clarity and wisdom. It’s needed because every church is involved in ministry to those with mental health struggles and yet most churches feel daunted by the challenges this presents. It’s beautiful because it is biblical, full of the kindness of Jesus and clarifies what often seems complicated to the lay person. There is helpful explanation of mental health issues and treatments, practical wisdom for ministry to those who are impacted by poor mental health and some great case studies to help us begin to see how our churches can be places where hurting people are helped. Getting this book will inspire you to do more for those who have poor mental health and give you the tools and insights to set a great foundation for this aspect of church life. | Steve Midgley is executive director of Biblical Counselling UK and a pastor at Christ Church Cambridge. Steve is a conference speaker, a board member for the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation, and a council member of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. He and his wife, Beth, have three adult children.