Mental Health, Medicine and Ministry is a pilot of a new product from Key Ministry. Our intent is to create a home for curated news and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians — especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church — from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry.
Suicide rates are at their highest point since 1941 - despite all the advances in mental health care of the past 80 years.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported earlier this month that nearly 50,000 Americans died from suicide in 2022. Suicide rates overall are at their highest rates since 1941. 80% of suicide deaths occur in men, with the highest risk groups being men ages 85 and over, followed by men ages 75-84 and men ages 45-64. If there was “good news” in the CDC report, suicide rates in children and teens declined slightly last year, but for the first time suicide rates in black youth are higher than those reported among whites.
Church leaders should train all frontline staff on appropriate response to persons in mental health crisis approaching the church for help. I’d also encourage leaders to check out Surviving2Gether, a Biblically-based support model from Fresh Hope (led by our friend and ministry colleague Pastor Brad Hoefs) designed as a resource for folks who have lost a loved one to suicide.
It’s a bad time from a mental health perspective to be a pastor in the United Methodist Church
Christianity Today reports on the decline in mental health among clergy in the United Methodist Church:
A survey of 1,200 United Methodist clergy found that half have trouble sleeping, a third feel depressed and isolated, half are obese, and three-quarters are worried about money.
Almost all of those measures have worsened in the past decade, according to the study from Wespath, which administers benefits for pastors and employees at United Methodist institutions.
Overall, United Methodist pastors feel worse and worry more than they did a decade ago.
“Even though we saw some areas of well-being improve in 2023 after very dismal results in 2021, the overall 10-year lookback tells us that clergy well-being, which was a problem a decade ago, is an even bigger problem today,” said Kelly Wittich, director of health and well-being at Wespath, in announcing the survey’s findings.
We practice evidence-based medicine - until the evidence conflicts with our ideology.
One of the practices I loved in medicine was the open debate among researchers and clinicians with differing perspectives and contrarian research as to the best practices in our field. In recent years, this type of open debate has become increasingly rare when research challenges the practices embraced by the our profession’s elites.
Wesley Smith is a writer for the National Review who has done great work in increasing awareness of the rapid acceptance of physician-assisted suicide within the medical profession and the broader Western culture. Here he calls attention to the work of a committee I served on for six years. As the medical community in the U.K., Sweden and Finland is slamming the brakes on “gender-affirming” interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery for minors, the medical establishment in the U.S. is doubling down in their embrace of these treatments.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Program Committee has nixed three different panel discussions submitted for the Academy’s 2022 and 2023 Annual Meetings featuring leading gender medicine specialists from Europe arguing for caution in use of these treatments in children and teenagers. If the leadership of the Academy is convinced “gender-affirming care” is evidence-based, why would they be concerned about hosting a dialogue with world-renowned clinicians with contrarian views?
Speaking of physician-assisted suicide…a new study examining why persons with autism or intellectual disabilities wanted to die.
The proportion of deaths resulting from physician-assisted suicide is soaring in countries such as the Netherlands and Canada, where the practice is widely accepted and not necessarily limited to a terminal medical condition. I’m of the belief that physician-assisted suicide, especially euthanasia of persons with chronic illnesses will be the major “pro-life” issue the church will be contending with in the 21st Century.
A team of authors recently published a review of 39 cases in which persons with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder from the Netherlands were granted their requests for physician-assisted suicide. The most common reason cited for requesting assistance with suicide was social isolation and loneliness (77%). Other reasons cited included lack of resilience or coping strategies (56%), lack of flexibility (rigid thinking or difficulty adapting to change) (44%) and oversensitivity to stimuli (26%). Factors directly associated with intellectual disability and/or ASD were the sole cause of suffering described in 21% of cases and a major contributing factor in a further 42% of cases. In one-third of cases, physicians noted there was ‘no prospect of improvement’ as ASD and intellectual disability are not treatable.
When the medical profession's credibility with the public “jumped the shark.”
Generations from now, historians will look back upon the statements and actions of the physicians and scientists responsible for America’s response to the COVID emergency as a time when large numbers of people lost trust in the medical profession. This well-sourced story in The Free Press describes the lengths that Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins (the head of the National Institute of Health, and someone who very publicly identifies as Christian) went to mislead the public about the origins of COVID-19 and the reality that our government was funding research in the creation of deadlier viruses in labs across the world, including the lab in Wuhan, China believed to be the most likely source of the virus.
Protective health measures were a prominent source of church discord during the pandemic. I truly feel sorry for church leaders in our next public health emergency who are encouraged by “the experts” to implement protective measures for attendees and guests.
Key Ministry team members will be fanning out across the country in the coming months for a variety of conferences and events.
Beth Golik will be speaking at the KidzMatter Children’s Ministry Conference in Murfreesboro, TN on September 12-14
Dr. Steve Grcevich will be speaking at the American Association of Christian Counselors Conference in Nashville, TN on September 13-16, and the Amplify Conference in Wheaton, IL on October 17-18.
Click on the links above to register for any of these events.
Please share any feedback in the "comments" section as to how we might make this resource more helpful. We anticipate publishing new issues on a weekly basis.
