FINDING HOPE HOW A LIFELONG STRUGGLE BECAME A CATALYST FOR THE CALLING OF A LIFETIME by Brooke Lawrence It’s time to break the silence about mental health in the church. Stigmas and stereotypes are plenty, but there is an ongoing shortage of education and understanding when it comes to mental health. Mental health is a category that is often treated differently from other areas of health. In many instances of physical illness, church families and communities rally together to pray, raise support and awareness, and to stand in unity with the victims. When a couple is struggling to find relational health within their marriage, or an individual suffers the loss of a loved one, there is a clear path for healing through counseling, a community of accountability and support, and even mentors who have walked that road before. Yet the response to a person with a mood disorder, or mental illness, can often be ambiguous, fearful, and minimal. According to the World Health Organization, one in four people suffer from mental illness also referred to as mood disorders. Amongst other things, mood disorders include PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar, and schizophrenia. For the three in four people who do not struggle with mental illness, it’s easy to ask the questions like, “Why can’t you just snap out of it?”, or “What did you do that caused this to happen?”. For Pastor Dale and Martha Rose, these questions became painfully familiar after their son, Stephen, was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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