The Rev. Jessica Stokes, "A Blueprint for Advocacy: St. Thomas More Catholic Church"



Across North Carolina,  faith communities are joining the wonderful work of mental health advocacy. These places of worship are eliminating stigma, becoming trauma-informed, promoting healthier mental health practices, providing resources, hosting trainings, normalizing professional therapy, and the list goes on.

There is sacred work happening throughout our state and one beautiful example of this, comes from Chapel Hill’s St. Thomas More Catholic Church. St. Thomas More goes to great lengths to include mental health in their outreach and pastoral care work. 


St. Thomas More Catholic Church offers a helpful example of what it looks like for a faith community to establish a mental health ministry that becomes central to the life of the church. The following blueprints are shared with the hope it inspires you to work within your own context. With the various social and societal needs around them, congregants within St. Thomas More identified the need for support on mental health within their church. Dr. Marianne Mitchell is one of these faithful congregants and became a wave of energy to get things going. 


Dr. Mitchell, a long-time member at St. Thomas More, is personally and professionally convicted by mental health advocacy. She works as an Educational Psychologist, with decades of teaching experience, and holds leadership positions through NAMI NC (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and Faith Connections on Mental Illness. While Dr. Mitchell is professionally trained, it is important to note, that one of her biggest drivers was her faith, and the spiritual connection of mind, body, and spirit. This is important because all of our faith communities can join this work, whatever your background might be. 


With Dr. Mitchell’s guidance, the group that would later become St. Thomas More’s Mental Health Ministry gained traction by informing the ministers of the acute need to talk about mental health and inviting people to share their personal stories with the staff. From there, the group developed a mission statement that includes the psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of the group’s purpose. This group then shared with the larger church the need to pivot from “reacting” to “responding/ doing”. 


The work group continued to get footing, with the support of the ministers, they began to regularly meet to become established as the Mental Health Ministry. Their first focus was literacy, which included a Mental Health First Aid training on language and establishing a general overview of how to support persons living with mental health concerns. From there, the group hosted various events and ongoing efforts, including:


  • “Lunch with the Psychiatrist”: a program held with one of their fellow congregants, who is a psychiatrist. 

  • During Mental Health Month and Mental Health Sunday, the committee collaborated with the ministerial staff to highlight mental health, deacons and pastors shared their own experiences, and prayers highlighted the theme. 

    • Also hosted a “Longest Night Service” during Advent to offer space for grief, emotional well-being, and processing. 

  • Hosted more trainings, such as “Sanctuary for Catholics”, and the deacons joined. 

  • Offered a caregiver support group

  • Collaborated with mental health agencies such as: Pathways to Promise, Faith Connections on Mental Illness, and NAMI NC. 

    • Hosted many of Faith Connections on Mental Health’s conference, which is always well attended and about relevant, needed topics.  



We celebrate faith communities like St. Thomas More, for responding to the call of mental health advocacy. We also give thanks for congregational leaders like Dr. Marianne Mitchell, and the entire Mental Health Ministry, for sharing their energy and time towards these marathon efforts. 


Highlighting mental health within your place of worship is courageous, sacred work. It can be difficult too. Overall, it offers countless opportunities to bring safety, understanding, and compassion in a new way to our communities. This will undoubtedly bring people closer to God and one another. 


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The Rev. Jessica Stokes is the Associate Director of Partners in Health and Wholeness, a program of the North Carolina Council of Churches. She leads the statewide mental health advocacy efforts. 


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The Clergy and Mental Health Blog is a forum for faith leaders to share insights and observations, sometimes speaking from personal experience, about faith and mental health.  We welcome diversity of thought and perspective.  The view of authors are their own and do not represent the views of the blog as a whole.

 

Please send comments and questions to: ClergyMHBlog@gmail.com

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