The long-standing stigma around mental health care has faded from many American churches, but has the shift made its approach to the ends of the earth?
When you’re an overseas missionary, a season of deep depression, panic attacks, or chronic anxiety can appear to put your ministry in jeopardy, keeping you from the work you’re being called and paid to do.
Yet missions staff are extra liable to such conditions. They experience culture shock. They witness trauma and fear persecution. And they often live in places where access to mental health professions is difficult to inconceivable.
For years, supporters have been attempting to open up more conversations about mental health and to get staff on the sphere the assistance they need, but missionaries still fear the repercussions of coming forward with their struggles or their relations’.
Just over half of missionaries say they’ve a problem they worry could jeopardize their work in the sphere, based on a survey conducted this 12 months by Global Trellis, a company that supports cross-cultural staff. Emotional and mental health struggles were amongst their top concerns.
The ministry asked nearly 400 missionaries, a lot of whom had spent 20-plus years in the sphere, “How can we keep senders from putting missionaries on the pedestal, and keep missionaries from feeling like they should stay on the pedestal?”
“We help people have language to discuss things. So, normalizing rest, normalizing growth, and just normalizing change,” said Amy Young, the founding father of Global Trellis and a former missionary to China.
Other research has shown that missionaries’ stress levels are double to triple those of the typical American, reaching levels that may result in major health issues.
Sending organizations have seen missionaries leaving the sphere in crisis. From their view, improving mental health care is a approach to higher support those sent out to satisfy the Great Commission and to make sure their work is sustainable.
Some agencies are advising missionaries to incorporate a budget for mental health care once they’re fundraising. They are also hiring and deploying more trained counselors who could be available—online and in person—to assist work through the particular complications that include missionary life.
“There was a robust belief that in the event you are really right with the Lord, you shouldn’t need counseling; you will have the Holy Spirit,” said Penny Phillips, who served with Wycliffe Bible Translators. “There was a point of shame related to seeing a counselor, and that has modified.”
Over many years as a missionary counselor with Wycliffe, based at its Orlando headquarters, she saw missionaries grow more open to in search of counseling. Phillips and fellow skilled counselors were available to travel to distant locations to minister to missionaries in many alternative countries.
“We were willing to see missionaries from any missionary organization,” said Phillips. Wycliffe’s goal, she said, was to serve all missionaries before, during, and after their time on the sphere. The important idea is for counseling to at all times be an open choice to people serving everywhere in the world.
While Phillips experienced and recognized the convenience of virtual counseling sessions, she still placed a high value on traveling to go to families in person. It is “easier to develop a trust relationship in a face-to-face situation,” she said.
John Leverington, also a longtime Wycliffe staff counselor, echoed Young within the importance of releasing missionaries from the pedestal on which they’ve stood for thus a few years.
“Those expectations are inconceivable to live as much as and may result in isolation, presenting a false self of competence while emotionally questioning one’s own faith, and, in some unspecified time in the future, coming to a crisis that may’t be resolved on your personal without support.”
With the actual dynamics of missionary work, mental health has proven to be a troublesome issue to navigate. In some cases, even when supplied with mental health support, missionaries would relatively suffer in silence than risk their sending organization declaring them unfit for his or her role.
“When missionaries are expected to go straight to their employers with health concerns, and when the assistance received is coming primarily from those in charge, a culture of distrust, fear, and secrecy can ensue,” Catherine Allison, who previously served in Malawi, wrote last 12 months for The Gospel Coalition.
“Even when set with one of the best intentions, the structures to guard missionaries might inadvertently cause harm when mental illness comes knocking, especially if missionaries fear the potential lack of their careers, homes, and ministry dreams.”
In the Global Trellis survey, respondents described a variety of self-reported mental health struggles and clinical issues: anxiety, depression and loneliness, PTSD from exposure to violence, and even suicidal ideation. One missions employee saw health issues as “the important way the Enemy attacks” families on the sphere.
Some said pastoral counseling and member care helped but wasn’t enough. One said they’re transparent with their organization in order that they can get the care they need, but they couldn’t be as open with supporters. Another said being open about her mental health has been a connecting point with supporters.
“This fear that a missionary could be faraway from the sphere attributable to emotional health can exacerbate the disconnect between many missionaries and those who send them,” the Global Trellis report read. “This can result in hiding how their emotional health is admittedly going.”
Sending organizations try to anticipate the potential for mental health needs and higher incorporate trusting and supportive relationships throughout their ministries, in order that missionaries and their families feel less isolated and leaders could be higher positioned to assist along the best way.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board (IMB), with 3,590 overseas personnel, takes a team approach. Its five-member care teams—one within the US and 4 abroad—include around 80 employees, a mix of clinically trained professionals and pastoral care staff. They function relational connections and support partners for those on mission fields.
“We give attention to supporting individuals, families—and we take care of people, not only regarding what is perhaps typically related to counseling or psychological needs. Our focus is more holistic when it comes to what people need spiritually, emotionally, and relationally, to be well and to have the ability to thrive of their places of project,” said Chris Martin, IMB’s director of member care.
As the agency continues to enhance the ways in which they serve their missionaries, Martin says he appreciates the cohesion amongst the various pieces of member care.
“Ideally, we might have routine contact with our personnel. Not only through our member care consultants but through team leaders and other leadership in our organization—and likewise team members who see and know enough about what’s happening with each other to be mutually caring and supportive,” he said.
As a past missionary himself, Martin understands the high stress of overseas living in addition to the proven fact that irrespective of where someone is, life shouldn’t be perfect. With that in mind, he talked about the concept one of the necessary goals for IMB member care is to advertise well-being inside each individual and between their teams across the globe.
Connie Dunn went through her own mental health struggles when serving as a missionary with Antioch Missions International. She brings that perspective and understanding into her work as a kids advocate for Antioch’s missionaries.
Antioch assigns its adult missionaries a pastoral overseer who shouldn’t be necessarily licensed in counseling but is committed to encouraging and caring for every person. Additionally, it also encourages all their missionaries to incorporate a budget for skilled mental health care as they raise support for his or her time on the sphere.
Dunn’s job is to ascertain in with families and youngsters to ensure that that they’re receiving the mental health care that they need.
“It’s not only a child counselor, nevertheless it’s also a child counselor that understands the hardships that third culture kids and missionary kids face,” she said.
When parents see their kids suffering or in crisis, it’s difficult and could be hard to get them help. But the mission field context adds one other layer of difficulty. Young at Global Trellis noted:
The missionary may wonder, “If it gets bad enough, are we going to have to go away the sphere? Could we lose our home and community? How will this affect our other kids’ education, education, and friends? How will this impact our youngsters’s relationship with God? How will it impact our livelihood?”
Phillips at Wycliffe also expressed a necessity for more counselors for young people. She herself had spent 17 years as a teacher to missionary kids before deciding to turn into a licensed mental health counselor specifically for youths on the mission field.
Phillips said it’s necessary to have the ability to intervene early when kids are facing trauma, anxiety, and depression in order that they can learn tools for navigating mental health challenges before entering maturity.
IMB recently implemented a program for youths and teenagers on the sphere called TCK (third-culture kid) focused member care. IMB’s goal is to be available each to the children in addition to to their families for advice and consultation.
As missions groups seek to bring the excellent news of Christ to the nations, also they are learning how best to take care of the people they’ve sent out.
Counseling, said Phillips, “is for courageous people—who’ve the courage to come back and ask for help—and for [people who] are willing to say, ‘I don’t have all of it together.’ None of us do.”
