Mental health and faithfulness

With All Due Respect

This episode is brought to you by Anglican Aid. Your gift will strengthen churches and help transform communities. You can donate to With All Due Respect's featured causes here.

This episode hosts Megan Powell du Toit and Michael Jensen question their mental stability.

Mental health has been a key conversation during the COVID crisis. People have argued for and against various public health measures by referring to the mental health effects. There has been a widespread understanding that a viral pandemic will have mental health costs as well.

Yet quite often, it is still those people 'out there' - those 'other people' we need to look after. And there continues to be an unhealthy tendency to give spiritual answers to mental health issues. Wouldn't it be better to delve instead into what it is to be people of faith dealing with mental health issues?

Michael and Megan get personal about how experience interacts with our theology and ministry, talk to clinical psychologist Sarah Hindle, and read together a recent novel by an Australian author which centres on a protagonist with mental illness.

SPECIAL OFFER

Sorrow And Bliss by Meg Mason and The Way I See It by Lucy Marrett are available for 20% off at Little Lost Bookshop when you use the code WADR. Happy reading!

A NOTE OF CONCERN

If this episode has raised difficult topics for you, and you'd like to talk to someone about them, Michael, Megan and Sarah recommend:

Lifeline: 13 11 14
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
eHeadspace: 1800 650 890
Beyondblue Support Service: 1300 224 636
NSW Mental Health Line: 1800 011 511

Help internally displaced people in Africa!

Disasters and conflicts have led to a record number of over 75 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, around the world. IDPs are people who have been forced to flee their homes but have not crossed international borders.

Almost half of all IDPs - more than the population of Australia and New Zealand combined - are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the displaced have left everything behind: their homes, belongings, and livelihoods. They urgently need food, shelter, clothing, and trauma counselling. So Anglican Aid has launched a Forced to Flee Emergency Appeal to provide essential aid to IDPs in Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and beyond. This aid will be distributed by local churches, who are sacrificially providing for the needs of the displaced, and pointing them to the God who is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

To find out more about this appeal and make a tax-deductible gift, visit anglicanaid.org.au/wadr.