30 - Family, Church, & Mental Illness (feat. Amy Simpson)
Congrats to whoever won the Super Bowl, since I'm writing these show notes before it happens. This week, I talk with life & leadership coach, author, & speaker Amy Simpson. We talk extensively about Amy's book Troubled Minds: Mental Illness & The Church's Mission, and we talk a lot about her experiences growing up with her father as a pastor and her mother being diagnosed with schizophrenia. She shares how those experiences impacted her, what she wishes would've been available to help her, and how the church can help families going through similar things today.
Things we mention/resources discussed in this episode:
- Fresh Hope
- The Mental Health Grace Alliance
- Mental Health First Aid
Connect with Amy on her website, Twitter, Facebook, or buy Troubled Minds on Amazon. You can also check out her other books, including Anxious and her newest book (releasing Feb. 13th), Blessed Are the Unsatisfied.
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Quotes:
- "There was a part of me that felt if I just loved her enough and I cared for her enough...she would get better." (tweet)
- "There was a point where the church felt like 'we've helped you, so things should be better now.'" (tweet)
- "I think with a lot of people there's a faith crisis that goes along with a mental health crisis." (tweet)
- "It would've been a tremendous ministry to me and my family to have mental illness simply mentioned in the context of faith." (tweet)
- "We have, in many contexts, largely forgotten how to talk about suffering." (tweet)
- "While we're mostly avoiding talking about suffering in our churches...we have people sitting the pews whose lives are hard." (tweet)
- "When people encounter suffering, they need to know that this does not undermine the reality of their faith." (tweet)
- "There's absolutely no excuse, in my mind, for any church in the United States not to have at least one person who is trained in mental health first aid." (tweet)
- "We're not going to replace the need for psychiatric care or for medication & counseling. But at the same time, they're not going to replace us either." (tweet)
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Intro/Outro music for this episode is Fall Down by Rivers & Robots.