Doctors and clergy approach healing differently. Doctors treat bodies, which means measuring vital signs, making diagnoses based on empirical evidence, and prescribing courses of treatment with the expectation of immediate results. Members of the clergy care for souls, which means providing pastoral care, teaching the fundamentals of faith, and believing in things that are by definition unprovable and immeasurable. And yet, as the mental health crisis in America reached a certain tipping point, we physicians realized that it was time to break down the barriers that have traditionally separated hospitals from houses of worship and train members of the clergy to offer what might be called emotional, psychological and spiritual. first aid.
To understand why more and more health systems are merging with faith-based organizations, consider that 169 million Americans live in areas with a severe shortage of mental health professionals, according to the Bureau of Health Personnel. This is more than half the population, and their number, alas, continues to grow. Compounding the problem is the cost factor: Many mental health professionals do not accept any insurance and charge significant amounts up front for their services.
These are some of the reasons why we at Northwell Health decided to do something we had never done before. We approached the clergy, asked them for help and offered help in return.
First, we formed a Clergy Advisory Council of 12 influential interfaith leaders to provide us with guidance and counsel. As New York City’s largest health care system, we serve people from a wide range of faith traditions, ethnicities and backgrounds, and we wanted to make sure we were prepared to meet the challenges and needs of each community. “Mental health” is not some kind of abstraction, and it cannot be addressed with ready-made solutions – context matters. To provide effective mental health care, you must really know what’s troubling specific people and communities, and our advisory board members help us move in the right direction.
But we knew that to overcome a crisis of this magnitude, we needed more than just leadership and advice. Two years ago, we launched Faith Leadership Teams, an initiative designed to provide clergy members with a three-year Mental Health First Aid, or MHFA, certification, a national program designed to teach skills to identify and respond to signs of mental illness and substance abuse.
The first step in this training was to offer the clergy themselves the tools and permissions they needed to practice self-care. For example, during Covid-19 we have seen so many dedicated priests and pastors, rabbis, imams and religious leaders of all traditions spending long hours checking on those in need, encouraging the lonely and comforting those who are afraid. This work was expensive, and yet few of these overworked healers knew how to pause and recharge their emotional and physical batteries.
By giving these caregivers the tools to take care of themselves, we taught them basic but important steps to provide effective and immediate help: how to assess the risk of suicide or harm, how to listen with an open mind, how to reassure and provide information, how to encourage appropriate professional help and how to promote self-help and other successful support strategies.
We are optimistic about the future of this program—and not just because it has already graduated hundreds of clergy who have since formed their own community of interfaith support. We now have ample evidence that this type of peer counseling is extremely effective. One 2021 meta-analysis of 44 studies found that interventions offered by lay people, including teachers and clergy, were generally more effective in treating and even preventing symptoms of anxiety and depression.
This helps explain why doctors and other health professionals increasingly view spirituality as one of the most important social determinants of health, factors that play a huge role in determining a person’s well-being. After all, faith-based organizations are not only effective in providing services and education that help communities better address public health issues; they also promote a sense of purpose and community, which improves overall mental health.
Let’s hope that more health care providers and faith leaders will join this challenge and dedicate time and resources to make sure we can help our struggling friends and family heal.
(Dr. Debbie Salas-Lopez is Northwell Health’s senior vice president of community and population health. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect the views of Religion News Service.)