The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) and the U.S. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) designate time in May for mental illness awareness. In fact, CMHA has created a hash tag: #getloud for mental health.
About 25 percent of people in North America will experience a mental health crisis at some point in their lives. When you add immediate family, the figure swells: above one-third of your congregation that will be directly affected by a mental illness at some point in their lives.
As you think about mental health and mental illness, you may wonder how your church can respond effectively to the many people in your congregation and community who are living with or have an immediate family member with a mental illness. To help your congregation, Disability Concerns created a Mental Health Speakers Bureau to allow congregations to find qualified people in their area who can speak on mental health issues.
The speakers in our Mental Health Speakers Bureau make presentations to churches on a variety of mental health issues. Currently we have speakers available in central California; northwestern Iowa; western and northern Michigan; Edmonton, Alberta; and the Hamilton and eastern Toronto regions of Ontario.
If your church is in any of these regions, and you would like more information about having a speaker come to your church, please be in touch at [email protected].
Comments
Mark,
Did you include me in the list of speakers?
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