A strong faith is a powerful tool for mental health help. For those living with serious mental illnesses, they seek out ways to find support, and sometimes that’s not just from a therapist, but from a spiritual perspective. Some of the challenges in life make it difficult to cultivate a vibrant spiritual life, but the same challenges can prevent an individual from seeking the right support.
If you’re in a position to be able to offer spiritual support to somebody in your life, then you should be able to give them that hand up that they need. Providing spiritual support can be meaningful and helpful to those who struggle with their mental health. There are several simple ways that people and families can come alongside them to offer the right support.Here are the ways that you can offer spiritual support to other people.
- Pray with them. If they are comfortable with it, praying with them is going to help them to speak and feel like they are getting some of the weight off of their shoulders. You can refer them to a Christian men’s group if they are more comfortable in that environment, just in the same way you can refer them to a Christian women’s group if they don’t want to talk about their problems with other men. Listen to their concerns and pray with them about those things. Some people keep their prayers very private, so if they do allow you to pray with them or that.
- Emphasize how valuable they are. If there’s one thing that the Bible can teach, it’s that we are all made in God’s image. Seeing somebody as a person and treating them with dignity and respect can help them to inherently affirm their worth and value, and it communicates to others and to them that they are deserving of kindness and respect.
- Recognize their condition. Mental health and mental illnesses can skew the perspective of an individual, so if you can help them by recognizing their condition out loud, they won’t feel like they’re going crazy. Encourage them to remember the truths about God and point them to Scripture and Bible verses that can help to move their thoughts in the direction that shows them that they are not alone.
- Welcome them at church. Those wrestling with serious mental health concerns can often struggle to find the right community.If you can guide them towards a church that is suited to them in their faith, they are going to feel more excited by the support they’re going to get. When you help them to feel comfortable, you play a big role in connecting them with others who can also offer them the right support.
Even if you are not a spiritual person in general, you can still support somebody who needs that spiritual support. Pray with them, take them to a local church to see if it’s something that’s their thing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your thing, but it does mean something to them that you are offering all of the support available.