Mental health professionals' support of self‐help groups

Objective. Self‐help groups and other consumer‐led services are viewed as valuable additions to mental health services. This study describes professional support for self‐help groups and examines the hypothesis that professional support of self‐help is influenced by the degree to which professionally‐led groups are viewed as more helpful than self‐help groups. Method. Survey data were obtained from a representative sample of over 900 mental health professionals employed in mental health agencies in a large US State. The survey assessed beliefs, behaviours, attitudes, and intentions toward professional and self‐help groups. Results. Respondents who perceive professionally‐led groups to be significantly more helpful than self‐help groups were less inclined to support self‐help groups through referrals, help in organizing groups, or financially. Conclusion. To the extent that professional support of the self‐help movement is diminished, valuable allies in the struggle to expand the reach of mental health services are lost. It is proposed that mental health professionals should obtain additional information about the benefits of self‐help and the constructive role that self‐help groups can play in expanding the availability and continuum of beneficial mental health services. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Small groups in the church: Problems and dangers

Conclusion The conflicted quality of the emotional life of some local churches might not tolerate the creation and sustaining of a small-group program. Not only may there be paralyzing ministerial ambivalence, or pastors who are easily threatened, but there are instances where important lay persons do not feel free to participate in such an experience but cannot tolerate that it should be going on apart from them. But where there is sufficient personal and structural flexibility and psychological freedom, along with the potentiality of a skillful leadership, the kind of small-group program discussed here offers an exciting opportunity for personal and community recreation. If such a program has its problems and dangers it is, at the same time, ripe with a promise to be redemptively rich and fruitful. But only as we identify and respond to the former can we realize and fulfill the latter.     

New challenges in mental health of children for church and community

Conclusion The church has a ministry to implant a sense of fatherhood and motherhood to persons who are able to minister to children. If there is a total effort on the part of the church and community mental health resources toward youth, we shall be able to meet the crisis in the mental health of children. Of course, to hope that we can eradicate mental illness for successive generations is out of the question. At best, we shall have sounded the note for the mental health of the family. To impart a meaningful way of life for a child means that he must encounter responsible and loving persons who are able to relate and share various learning experiences. Adults need to have fun with children and affirm them as delightful and precious. Revitalizing a sense of being a therapeutic agent to children and families is another expression of renewal for the local church.     

Money for the church

Pastoral Psychology -     

Mental health workshop

Pastoral Psychology -