Sep 18, 2024 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hi all,
Warm-up question: What are your favorite fall foods and rituals? Your favorite pumpkin patches, fall festivals, and produce stands? (asking for a friend 
)
Kirsten
May 16, 2024 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Good Afternoon Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I am grateful to Brian for suggesting the topic for our conversation tomorrow. It reminds me of God’s call to St. James’ for the Mental Health Ministry. Since 2018, our mission for the ministry has been to help reduce the silence and stigma that surrounds mental illness and increase compassionate awareness and accurate understanding of it. In the attached short CBS interview, we hear Patrick J. Kennedy who struggles with Bi-polar and his efforts to reduce the persistent stigma leading to silence and shame around mental health problems. Yes, it takes real courage to talk about family and personal problems. As you watch this short interview, please think about what you would like to have done differently as you encountered people with mental illness, including your loved ones.
Please try to watch this video before our meeting, just in case I am not able to to share screen.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/patrick-j-kennedy-works-to-reduce-stigma-around-mental-health-substance-use-with-new-book/
Our warm-up question for this week:
What is the hardest thing you have ever done? What was the motivation behind that?
See all of you who can make it tomorrow,
Sampson
Feb 15, 2024 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hello friends,
It’s tempting to think of mental illness in terms of diagnoses, and to some extent it makes sense to do so. After all, by necessity there are commonalities in how people experience clinical depression or any other named health outcome. The problem is that there are wide ranges of experiences “within” a diagnosis; how one person experiences and recovers from clinical depression can be dramatically different from the next person.
This is yet another reason why it’s so important to anchor our understanding of mental illness on the perspectives of those whose lives are touched by it. Through this lens we can begin to appreciate how much diversity there is in mental illness experiences and outcomes. We’ll get a chance to do just this as we watch and respond to a video titled, “Mental Health: In Our Own Words” during our conversation this week. I hope to see you there!
Our warm-up question for this week:
Imagine you were going to take a cross-country road trip anywhere in the world…where would you go, and what kind of vehicle would you want to travel in?
See you soon,
Alex
Jan 25, 2024 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hello friends,
Oxford Languages defines stigma as, “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.” It defines stigmatization as, “the action of describing or regarding someone or something as worthy of disgrace or great disapproval.” Even the definitions make me cringe.
This week we’re going to watch a quick video about the stigmatization of mental illness: Ending the Stigma of Mental Illness (youtube.com). We can discuss personal or witnessed stigmatization of people with fragilities, especially mental illness, and even the stigmatization of families and loved ones of people with mental illness. This video is made by an organization co-founded by Glenn Close, “Bring Change to Mind” which is working to destigmatize mental illness.
Here is a link to an article that discusses mental health stigma
Mental Health Stigma and The Pandemic | Newport Academy
Our warm-up question for this week:
Tell us about a time when you felt stigmatized or witnessed it, for anything, i.e. age, gender, personality quirks… .
Alex asked me to fill in for him this week, and we all know those are big shoes to fill. Here is the link, and it is the long kind as I don’t know how to make it short like Alex does. Please be patient with mistakes and hiccups. Hope to see you Thursday.
Deatley
Jan 18, 2024 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hello friends,
If I asked you to describe what it means to be in good physical health, I suspect you’d have an easy time starting to answer. Strong, regular heartbeat; breathing easily; able to get around pain-free and with minimal effort; and so on. Now try the same exercise, but with mental health. Sure, it means there’s no mental illness, but that doesn’t really describe what a healthy state “looks like.”
We’ll watch together a wonderful video on what mental health means as a concept, and discuss how we’ve thought about our own health status over time. How do we think about our mental health when things don’t feel optimal? Do we judge ourselves too harshly? Are we as comfortable talking about our mental health in the same ways we talk about our physical health?
Our warm-up question for this week:
Tell us about a fun memory from a time when you were in the snow!
See you soon,
Alex
