The Rev. Laura Michelle Foley and Gretchen V. Miller, "Dear Faith Communities"
Dear Faith Communities, I have some good and bad news for you. You play a far more instrumental role in an individual's mental health than you may realize. Trauma research has shown, time after time, that when someone experiences a trauma, their relational contexts- their families and church communities- have more of an effect on the person’s resilience than the intensity of the experience itself. Meaning, church communities, like yourself, retain the power to help heal those who have experienced trauma. Our recent area of study is on relational, familial, communal, societal, and environmental systems. We are learning that problems in these systems trickle down to the people within them. We are trying to learn how to help manage problems on a systemic level, so that the individuals within them no longer have to suffer the symptoms of dysfunctions within organizations. We believe that mental health is inseparable from social and communal health, and problems are not isolated to t