Faith and Mental Health: Finding Sanctuary in Therapy (Excerpt)
By Brandi Hunter for Faithfully Magazine, September 17, 2018
As Americans’ opinions about counseling continue to trend more positively, the church has room to improve its efforts to eliminate the tension between faith and mental healthcare.
Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, licensed psychologist and host of the “Therapy for Black Girls” podcast, said she has seen a bit of progress in that area.
“I’ve been encouraged to see more and more faith communities talk about the fact that you can have faith and a therapist,” she said. “You can talk to your pastor and talk to a therapist. So that’s encouraging, but I think we still have a long way to go.”
Obstacles that prevent African Americans from seeking professional help can include miseducation about mental health, belief that mental illnesses are punishment from God, or shame associated with admitting to needing help, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Musician Anthony Evans has no shame when talking about his experience with therapy.
“People can say whatever they want. I don’t care. Counseling has changed my life,” he said in a recent YouTube video. “It takes more strength for a person, but especially a man, and especially a Black male. It takes more strength to admit you need it and admit you’re vulnerable in that way than it does to act tough. I know that for a fact. Acting tough is not as strong as showing that you’re weak.”
Evans is the son of prominent pastor, Dr. Tony Evans. While discussing his new book, Unexpected Places: Thoughts on God, Faith, and Finding Your Voice in an interview with his sister Chrystal Evans Hurst, the recording artist and worship leader detailed a recent counseling experience.
“When we went through the recent loss of our beautiful cousin, I was on the phone. My counselor, she’s amazing. She was on-call for me because I needed to process going through it,” he said. “I was doing 30-minute sessions. I would walk out of the house while our family was grieving and would get on the phone and do a session with my counselor and then walk back in the house.”
Dr. Joy said people incorrectly assume they have to compartmentalize faith and therapy.
“People think that you’ll come to therapy and the therapist will be like, ‘You can’t pray,’ or the therapist is working against the pastor. That is typically not what happens at all, especially if the therapist is faith-sensitive or affirming of what your faith background is and wants to incorporate that into the treatment plan.”
Continue reading at faithfullymagazine.com (paywall).
