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proverbs1728 · 4 years

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Mental Health Awareness Week 2020

Mental Health Awareness Week is a great opportunity to promote wellbeing. Mental Health Awareness is like health promotion - we are given information about what can make us poorly and how we can stay healthy.

It’s not telling us what to do. If it’s done right it is about making us aware of what might be helpful or harmful. Then we can have a bit of control and, of course, we have some responsibility for doing what we can.

Mental health and physical health are closely linked. One effects the other. Things like diet and exercise and smoking and alcohol and medicine are all part of our wellbeing.

Mental and physical health can be affected by our environment, say pollution for instance. There is strong evidence that our wellbeing is influenced by social factors like poverty, housing, employment and inequality. These are some of the things we could be doing something about.

This year, the Mental Health Foundation has chosen ‘kindness’ as its theme for the awareness week. I pricked up my ears when I heard this as it occurred to me that churches are places where kindness is something that can be found in abundance. Loving our neighbour is exactly our thing.

The Mental Health Foundation has an excellent website and it says

“Kindness can have real benefits for our mental health and wellbeing.’ They did a substantial online survey with yougov in April of 2020. 63% of UK adults agree that when other people are kind it has a positive impact on their mental health. The same proportion agree that being kind to others has a positive impact on their mental health.

What I take from this is that as individuals, groups, parishes and dioceses have a great deal to offer.

Let me set out my stall. As an Approved Mental Health Professional, I am the person who makes the decision about whether a person with a mental disorder is deprived of their liberty.

It isn’t an easy job and you couldn’t do it without coming away wondering if you have made the right decision. I will never forget a night when, as a trainee, I walked down the corridor at the Bradgate Unit with a woman who was to be detained. During that day I had heard about her experience of sexual abuse as a young person. Many, many years later she had children and was married to a man who worked for a high profile accountancy firm.

She had taken an overdose and was in the Royal Infirmary threatening to discharge herself so that she could take her own life. While I walked down the corridor with her I felt that this was a very poor response in a situation of desolation and desperation.

I am a provider of mental health services but, twenty years ago, I was an in- patient consumer of them as well.

It’s quite hard to say this. My head says ‘why, what’s the problem?’ but my heart feels strangely ashamed. I just wanted to say to you that I know how it feels to be told to smoke less or drink less or get more exercise. Back then I could not see how this might help and, frankly, it added to my sense that I wasn’t really being listened to.

Now then. Covid 19 and the lockdown have made life difficult. I keep hearing people talking about things getting back to normal. Folks are looking forward to watching the football, going out for a meal, gathering for worship. We mourn for the comfortable world from which we have been exiled. We weep as we remember Zion.

As for me; I’m very keen on folk music and dancing. Lots of events and gatherings have been cancelled and so lots of seasonal encounters with folky friends have been missed this year.

I’ve been working from home, queueing for my shopping, not able to visit my family or friends. My holiday in France had to be cancelled. An appointment for very minor surgery was postponed.

For many people the consequences have been very much more serious. People have lost their jobs. Others have not been able to receive the treatment they need for painful and life-threatening illness. Families have been separated. Many people have been confined to a life of loneliness and isolation. Some have died. Many are bereaved. Lock down has reminded us that we have many things to be thankful for.

Now I want to ask, is normal all is cracked up to be? I have some statistics for you. I’m not trying to convince you of anything except to say that we have a high tolerance level when it comes to some things that are ‘normal’.

The average person living in Europe loses two years of their life to the health effects of breathing polluted air.

Normal is twenty eight thousand street homeless people (according to the BBC)

Normal is that 70.9 million prescriptions for antidepressants were given out in 2018 (there were 36 million in 2008).

There were nearly 50,000 detentions to psychiatric hospital were made under the MHA in the year 2018 / 2019

Approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year.

In England, 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (such as anxiety and depression) in any given week.

I could go on and on: addiction, crime, violence, painting a bleak picture. Actually, part of what the statistics tell us it that normal is ok for most people most of the time. Five out of six of us won’t experience a common mental health problem this week. We won’t be victims of abuse or lose our jobs.

I suppose that’s why we can get along with normal. As a species and especially, apparently, as a nation we like to carry on as though things are normal, even when they aren’t. We take statins, stimulants, anti-depressants, consume alcohol, blood pressure pills, sleeping tablets.

I noticed an advert on the tv the other day. Two blokes, who live next door to each other, go for a night out and get indigestion. One of the men has an effective, and no doubt expensive, remedy, which means he can start the process over again the next morning.

I’m not knocking normal. I just want you to think about it a bit. What then is it like if things aren’t normal?

The lockdown has shown us the world in a different light. Does anybody remember birdsong being so abundant and so sweet before? I used to be able to hear the M1 from my back garden but now it’s just birdsong. Were the birds singing before and I just couldn’t hear them?

Air pollution has dipped. The water is cleaner. It’s quieter. Road traffic has diminished to 1955 levels. People have volunteered to help the NHS in their hundreds of thousands. £33m raised by Captain, soon to be Sir, Tom Moore. I’m also hearing people saying we mustn’t go back to normal.

But not being normal also means being different. Different, like being a woman in a male working environment, like not having English as your first language, like being a member of the LGBT+ community in a heterosexually orientated world, like being a wheelchair user in a world of steps and stairs. Being reminded that you are different all the time is to feel excluded, like you are not wanted. Never at home.

And not being normal is, pretty much, how mental illness or ‘mental disorder’ is defined. But normality has changed and so being abnormal has too. It took until the nineteen seventies for western psychiatry to decide that to be ‘homosexual’ was not a mental illness.

The diagnosis of mental illness is different. There is no objective test, as there is for say, polio or meningitis. The presence of mental illness is identified by reference to a manual of classification.

This is difficult so please stay with me!

I quote from the International Classification of Diseases, ‘The phenomena used to diagnose schizophrenia include thought echo; thought insertion or withdrawal; thought broadcasting; delusional perception and delusions of control; influence or passivity; hallucinatory voices commenting or discussing the patient in the third person; thought disorders and negative symptoms.’

The doctor will make a diagnosis based on their interpretation of your symptoms. You could have several people with different sets of symptoms but the same diagnosis. Then another psychiatrist makes a different diagnosis. This happens a lot.

The treatment is anti-psychotic medication, which has serious side effects. Some additional observations here. One from a clinical psychologist, who said that knowing somebody’s diagnosis is about as useful as knowing their star sign.

Another writer, who has extensively researched anti-psychotic medication, suggests that you will get tardive dyskinesia, which is a bit like parkinson’s disease if you take anti-psychotics long term and that you are better off living with the psychosis than taking the medication. Sometimes I can’t tell if the behaviour of the person I am working with is caused by the illness or the medication.

I have endless respect for my psychiatrist colleagues. We can discuss treatment and plans. They bring their perspective and I bring mine. We get input from SALT and OT and nurses and psychology.

The treatment of mental illness is problematic because what is needed is time and space and that’s what we don’t have. The approach is driven by necessity, usually a crisis. We always seem to be firefighting.

The speed of life increases, social pressures increase and mental illness goes up too. We don’t have the resources or, as far as I can fathom, the will to sort out some of the social problems that contribute to mental disorder.

In a very large nutshell, this is how mental disorder works. It’s called the biopsychosocial model.

The biological factors are your genes, brain chemistry, immune response, environmental toxins and soforth

Psychological factors are attitudes and beliefs, learning and memory, coping and emotional skills.

Social factors are work, education, poverty, things like that

Each of us has strengths and weaknesses in these areas and different tolerance levels.

Some people cope with working and parenting and exercising and not smoking or drinking and burning the candle at both ends and they cruise their way through life.

Some people don’t. Some people work hard and look after family and they do this for years and then suddenly it comes crashing down.

Some people experience poor mental health from an early age, the opportunities diminish, the treatment takes its toll. There are combinations of all the above, as many as you can think of.

Since the latter part of the twentieth century there has been a move away from specialist provision like day care and long stay hospitals and much more of a move towards looking after people in their own homes. Sadly, we have now lost the concept of asylum. The huge Victorian hospitals with their acres of parkland have been replaced by pokey little units commissioned and designed by people who never imagined being looked after in one themselves

As in other health services there has been a move to help people to manage their own support and treatment. The focus is on developing insight and living with the condition. Attitudes to mental illness are more positive than they were last century but people with mental health problems still experience significant discrimination and prejudice.

Back to normality. In 1983, 66% of the population describes themselves as Christian. To be Christian in the UK was to be normal. In 2018, 38% of the population described themselves as Christian and 12% of these Anglican.

When I left school in 1983, it was nearly normal to be an Anglican. Nowadays, it’s not normal at all! Brothers and sisters you are beautifully equipped to take this forward. You are kind and you are abnormal.

What do we have to do? We have to be kind to ourselves and to other people. The covid virus has been awful for lots of people. It has been incredibly stressful for health and social care workers. It has been incredibly stressful for people who have been forced into isolation. There has been an increase in domestic violence. Who knows how much people are drinking. Non accidental injuries to children have increased. Services for homeless people, housing and benefits advice, drop ins closed. There is going to be a backlash. We were going to be clearing up for a long time and things won’t be the same.

Let’s be kind. Let’s be good Samaritans. The Mental Health Foundation has produced some lovely resources. There is no point in listing it all here. Get on their website. Share it electronically. You’re all internet savvy else you wouldn’t be here. It would be great if you could print some of this stuff off and share it safely with friends who are not on line.

There are so many suggestions but I think we should be getting on the phone to our friends and families. There are people I haven’t spoken to for soooo long. Get on the phone. Talk to people. Pray with them. When I have a minute I’m going to write a letter. I’d love to get a letter with a stamp and ink and everything.

My suspicion is that we are good at being kind to other people but not so good at being kind to ourselves. Make some me time. I know that it goes against the grain for many people. Take time just to be silent and pray for just a few minutes during the day. Do things you enjoy. Do something different, change your routine, just to see what it feels like.

Relax and reflect on how you’re feeling and how your day or week has been.

Pray and meditate.

Turn off from your social media channels for a day (or even a week).

Stop watching the news (although it is ok to have ‘Today’ on when Bishop Guli does ‘Thought for the Day’).

Treat yourself to something small, such as buying or planting some flowers. 

Spend some time in nature – pray outside.

And check how you are feeling. Get in touch with the doctor if you need to. Talk it through with a friend or call the helpline 0808 800 3302

Moving forward, the church is equipped to support people who have mental health problems. We have space, we have tea and we have compassion in abundance. I would really like you to go and think about how the church can help to support people to stay out of hospital and to get them out more quickly.

There is evidence indicating that the opportunity to practice your faith and contact your faith community is central to recovery and good mental health. We need to be talking to our local mental health trust to see what is needed. There are beacons of good practice and so we need to ensure that we know what’s going on in our locality so’s not to replicate or dilute good stuff that’s going on.

We need to think about how we welcome people who may be experiencing poor mental health when they come to church. Are we welcoming? Are we overbearing? Is there a message about mental health coming from the pulpit? In intercessions? Perhaps you could offer support to causes that would benefit wellbeing, showing our community that the church has many of the same concerns and putting our shoulders to the wheel.

To conclude. My wife and the cat and I have born isolation reasonably stoically. It has been like being in a tiny little ark, locked into our bubble while we watch the world drowning in chaos. When we went for a walk, I was struck by the number of rainbows; in windows, on the pavement. And I remembered

“ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

And when I hear the birdsong I think maybe God has been present all along but I just didn’t notice in the busyness of daily life.

#mentalhealthawarenessweek #mental health

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proverbs1728 · 4 years

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Some talk of Mental Health. A bit clunky, but...

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proverbs1728 · 5 years

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COVID-19

Stay at home and worship and meditate with others online.

Weekdays 06.55hrs Morning prayer https://zoom.us/j/7550984427

Weekdays 19.00hrs Evening prayer https://zoom.us/j/608935694

Weekdays 06.18hrs Morning meditation (which is, effectively, a short Julian Meeting) https://zoom.us/j/426055429

Julian Meeting Mon & Weds 19.30 https://zoom.us/j/285705397

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proverbs1728 · 5 years

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Epiphany. Jesus has been baptised and has spent forty days in the wilderness. He has, you might say, been in the crucible of the desert where he has experienced extreme spiritual refinement. Now Jesus is in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. He has been preaching around Galilee. News about him has spread. What news is this? We can only speculate but we know that there is a real buzz and his name is on peoples’ lips. He is handed the scroll. Jesus knows his way around the scriptures. The great scroll of Isiah found at Qumran was twenty four feet long. The text quoted is are right at the end of Isiah, I reckon about twenty feet in. Imagine the tension as he unfurls the scroll. He reads “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Everybody’s eyes are on him. He puts the scroll down and he says “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” There’s no ‘umming’ and ‘aahing’. No ‘unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’. Jesus says it straight out. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” He has come to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind and to set the oppressed free. What was it like in Galilee two thousand years ago? The name Galilee derives from the Hebrew word for circle. Galilee was so called because it was encircled by non-Jewish nations. Because of that, new influences had always played upon Galilee and it was the most forward-looking and least conservative part of Palestine. Josephus was an early historian who recorded Jewish history, writing in the first century AD. He described the Galileans as people who were ‘ever fond of innovations and by nature disposed to changes, delighting in seditions. They were never destitute of courage and ever ready to follow a leader who would begin an insurrection. They were quick in temper and given to quarrelling." Actually, they were people pretty much like ourselves! These were turbulent times. There had been rebellion in the region prior following the imposition of direct rule by Rome. Pilate had acted in ways that caused great affront to the Jewish people. Roman taxation added to the burden of the average citizen in economic terms. More than a quarter of the population, unattached widows, orphans, beggars, disabled, unskilled day labourers and prisoners lived at below subsistence level. Another two thirds lived on or around subsistence level. Those people who were destitute were despised rather than pitied. The book of Isaiah was well known and cherished in the synagogue. The text that Jesus used was evocative of an earlier time when the Jews were in exile. Isaiah predicts the fall of Babylon, the mighty empire that destroyed the temple and exiled the professionals, priests, craftsmen, and the wealthy. It is easy to imagine that the Romans were despised in the same way, indeed we know that insurrection culminated in the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the second temple in 70 ad. So, within this context, imagine the effect of Jesus’ words ‘This scripture is to be fulfilled’. At this point he is really speaking their language. He certainly has their attention Here is Jesus, at the very heart of the Jewish life and faith, in a big town in Galilee. He sums up the message of the gospel in just a few short sentences. He draws from the very core of the faith of his audience - they immediately know what he is talking about and they can relate to what he says because of the hurt they feel as a community. They are all too familiar with injustice and oppression. What about us? We live in an affluent society, in a thriving, diverse university town. Who are the oppressed in Loughborough in 2019? Who are the prisoners? Who are the blind? You will have your own thoughts. Here is one perspective. Perhaps, like me, you have noticed as you walk through town that there does seem to be a rise in the number of people who are begging on the streets. Agencies that work with the homeless and vulnerably housed tell us that the average age at death of homeless people was 44 years for men, 42 years for women between 2013 and 2017. In comparison, in the general population of England and Wales in 2017, the average at death was 76 years for men and 81 years for women. Deaths of homeless people have increased by 24% over five years (to 2017). Men account for 84% of deaths. Half the people who sleep rough in the UK need mental health support. Forty five per cent of homeless people had been diagnosed with a mental health issue, with 80 per cent reporting some form of mental health problem. Homeless people are dying on the streets. As many as half of them have mental health problems. Women experiencing domestic abuse are more likely to experience a mental health problem. Women with mental health problems are more likely to be domestically abused. People with severe mental illnesses are more likely to be victims, rather than perpetrators, of violent crime. Ninety per cent of people who die through suicide in the UK are experiencing mental distress. Children and adults living in households in the lowest 20% income bracket in Great Britain are two to three times more likely to develop mental health problems than those in the highest. In 2016, the number of people deprived of their liberty because of their mental health was 63,622. An increase of 40% in ten years. Yet Jesus said I have come to set the oppressed free. How does this make you feel? Mental ill health is not something that happens to other people. It is something that effects all of us. About one in four of us will experience a mental health problem each year. One in five will have suicidal thoughts. We live in a country where most things go well for most people most of the time, where truth and justice are upheld by the courts and by the government. Our rights are enshrined in law. We have a fantastic National Health Service. I know this is a time of political uncertainty but our lives are more privileged than people in other parts of the world can imagine. I want to suggest to you that people with mental health problems are a group of people who need our attention. That they are oppressed, often poor and sometimes deprived of their liberty. They need our compassion and support. There are about eighty of us here in church today. We may extrapolate, estimate and conclude, that twenty of us will experience a mental health problem in 2019. Thirteen of us will have suicidal thoughts. In the epistle today St Paul reminds us that we are members of the body of Christ. He says that, “if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together...’ How can we respond to the mental distress of others in our church and in our community and in our world? What can we do as individuals and as a church? How can we look after one another? Everything begins and ends with prayer. Prayer is the first step, but it is not the final step. We pray and we move into action. Here at All Saints there is a fledgling mental health action group which will be working to raise awareness of mental health issues and find out what can be done. We meet every other month or so and plan to hold an event in May to mark World Mental Health Awareness Week. You can me and talk to me about this any time. I am interested in mental health and always glad to hear your thoughts. There is a great deal of knowledge in this church today. We have all had our ups and downs, sleeplessness and worry and sadness and anxiety. We all have some experience of mental distress. The important thing is that we start to talk about it, that we don’t pretend that it isn’t there. Much of the stress experienced by people who have poor mental health and the people who look after them comes from the stigma attached. The notion that mental illness is brought on by sin or inadequacy or possession. That people with mental health problems are dangerous. There isn’t a single answer. St Paul says that we are all given gifts. Some to teach, some to help and some to heal. It may be that, through prayer, we can come to believe that we could use our gifts to support people with mental health problems. To listen and to take notice. To advocate and to campaign. To offer compassion. To set the oppressed free. Amen

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proverbs1728 · 5 years

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Prayers for Monday

From the rising of the sun to its setting, let us pray to the Lord.

We pray that this day may be holy, good and joyful. We ask that we may walk before you in the paths of righteousness and peace. May you be present in every encounter. Lord hear us, Lord graciously hear us

We pray for this beautiful and fragile world. We pray that we may be good and faithful stewards of your creation. We pray for those involved in farming and fishing. We pray that the land and the seas may be harvested without injury to life and without damaging the rich resources you have bestowed on us. Lord hear us

We pray for those who make the things we need and provide the services that make our lives comfortable. We pray that they will be fairly rewarded and enjoy a safe working environment. Lord hear us

We pray for people who seek employment. We pray for people who are claiming benefits. May they be treated with dignity and compassion. Lord hear us

We pray for people who work in the media. We pray that they will be honest, truthful and responsible; aware of the influence that they hold. We pray for those who work in the arts, that they may bring colour and beauty to your world. Lord hear us

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proverbs1728 · 5 years

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Somebody called K came to the online Julian Meeting last night. K didn’t speak and didn’t use the video but stayed for half an hour. This is a beautiful new dimension that I hadn’t really thought of before. You can join the meeting anonymously, without even showing your face. Just being there, making the connection with the presence of the Holy Spirit.

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proverbs1728 · 5 years

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Julian iv

Being a bit rushed, I didn’t give enough time to my choice of readings last week. I picked a passage from ‘A Modern Priest Looks at his Outdated Church’ by Fr James Kavanagh. The sentiments were splendid, ‘where sinful men are helped by sinful men, and ‘I believe in the words that God has left for man’ and ‘I believe in man’s love for woman and hers for him,’ but as I read it aloud I became very conscious of the non inclusive language. Here is a link to his obituary. https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2010-jan-09-la-me-james-kavanaugh9-2010jan09-story.html

I always enjoyed the rhythm of the Scottish Prayer Book 1929, the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ and ‘verilys’. It only recently came to my attention that the language is quite oppressive.

I found the Kavanagh passage in my Celtic Prayer book. I really like this book but there is some stuff I don’t get. There is a reflection by Lee Strobel. Lee asks whether Jesus could have fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies by accident. ‘No’ says Strobel, “The odds are so astronomical that they rule that out.” I had studied this same statistical analysis by mathematician Peter W. Stoner, who estimated that the probability of fulfilling just 48 prophecies was one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion! Our minds can’t comprehend a number that big. This is a staggering statistic equal to the number of atoms in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, billion universes the size of our universe! “The odds alone say it would be impossible for anyone to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies, yet Jesus—and only Jesus throughout all of history—managed to do it.”

Here are words of Bishop Spong, ““It didn’t happen, as fundamentalists used to say, that the Bible predicted and Jesus fulfilled...The fact is, they wrote the story of Jesus with the Bible open so it would be fulfilled, and every Biblical scholar knows that.”

Similarly, Marcus Borg - “Rather, by presenting Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy and as one like Moses, Matthew claimed the traditions of Israel for his community.”

Strobel’s argument is lifted from Stoner & Newman’s ‘Science Speaks’

“...did you know that the Old Testament prophet Micah, writing circa 700 B.C., out of the hundreds and hundreds of cities in the scores and scores of nations in existence all over the world even in those days, designated Bethlehem of Judea as the birthplace of the Messiah (Micah 5:2)? And that at about the same time, Isaiah (7:14) said that the Christ would be born of a virgin?”

I find it really hard to believe something that my head doesn’t accept. My faith is fine.

I suppose I should be more open to Mr Strobel. You can find him here -https://leestrobel.com/

Perhaps he’ll surprise me, like Fr Kavanagh -

"I will probably be a searcher until I die and hopefully death itself will only be another adventure. To live any other way seems impossible. If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become."

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