I feel a strange sort of pressure to write something related to Mental Health Awareness Month, which is observed in the U.S. every May. At my church, I did focus my first sermon of the month on mental health awareness, and we also held a Mental Health 101 workshop presented by our local NAMI affiliate.
Those are important efforts, I think.
And also:
I have had a hard time knowing quite what to share here or on social media about mental health awareness. Part of that might be that I’ve been focusing on the ministry of my congregation. And part of it might just be that I’ve been trying to stay away from social media more these days — it’s not, frankly, great for my mental health. But there’s something else, too, I think:
I’m getting a little bit tired, at least on a personal level, of awareness.
I don’t want to over-make this point: awareness is good, and in a context such as a local congregation, awareness is the right place to begin. It’s the first step in any kind of cycle or process of change.
But there are downsides to an awareness focus. Or, at least, downsides if we stay in “awareness” mode and never take another step. I remember years ago attending a communications training while working for an advocacy non-profit in D.C., and the presenter asked each of us to name the goal of our organization. Almost everyone used the framework of awareness. The presenter challenged us on that. “What does awareness mean?,” they asked. “When will you know that people are aware of your issue? Is it when you’ve put it in front of a certain number of eyes? Then say that. Is it when people’s behavior changes? Say that.”
And, too, I’m not sure that the real struggles we have with mental health in our communities are due to a lack of awareness. People are aware that mental health challenges exist. I’d say we’ve reach a high level of just-plain-old-awareness. But people just lack depth of understanding, or they lack empathy, or they lack tools to respond, or they lack the resources to care for themselves or for others.
In fact, many of us are painfully aware of the realities of mental health conditions - if we believe the information provided by groups like NAMI, 1 in 5 of us struggle rather directly with them, the most acute sort of awareness imaginable.
So for those of us in the painfully aware category, and those who want to support us: what’s next? How do we go beyond awareness to equipping communities, building movements, and creating change?
That’s part of what I was grappling with when I wrote my (as it turns out, catastrophically ill-timed) second book. I don’t know that I really answered the question, but I at least wanted to start asking it: once we’re aware, what happens next?
In the narrative of the church year, we are in between Ascension and Pentecost. The followers and friends of Jesus have been instructed to stay in Jerusalem until the arrival of the Holy Spirit, which will then call them out into the world with new inspiration and dynamism. The apostles spend this time in prayer, opening themselves up to the question they, too, are impatient to answer: “What’s next?”
And so I’m sitting, today, with my painful awareness, my unease with its incompleteness, and, I hope and pray, with an openness to the Spirit’s leading - in my life, in the life of my congregation, and in our world.
