Mental Health Awareness

My Journal - Agatha Nolen

At Duke Divinity School, the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health offers monthly webinars via zoom. I’m looking forward to the one this week: Spirituality, Recovery and Resilience: A Holistic Bio-Psycho-Social Spiritual Approach to Mental Health Treatment. (Anyone can join the free webinar: Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023, 11:00-12:00 CST. Zoom: https://duke.zoom.us/j/94380012247?pwd=aTZ2bUxWSWtQaG05bmFlNEQ4VXBpUT09)

I’ve been reading a lot about the changes the pandemic had on us socially: we’ve become more isolated and in many cases, lonely. That has manifested throughout the U.S. in tragedies such as an increase in deaths from opiate addiction and mass shootings as well as more subtle outbursts of anger and hopelessness on social media.

As a pharmacist, I practiced only occasionally in the area of psychopharmacy, but always wanted to know more about how our healthcare system considers mental health and ways that we can increase awareness. In my M.Div. program at Duke, I am also now interested in how spirituality and religion intersect with mental health.

Growing up, talking about mental health issues was taboo. In the recent hit, Encanto, the number one song is “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” in which Bruno is a family outcast and goes into hiding in his home. The first thing I thought was that Bruno had some issues that the family didn’t want to deal with so he was banished from being recognized as part of the family.

Watching Encanto for the first time made me realize that I have had mental health issues that I have “brushed under the rug” too. I’d become anorectic for a short time during my freshman year of college and that depression-caused eating disorder returned again during my treatment for breast cancer in 2008. It was never clear if my mother had become disoriented and taken too many morphine tablets or if was a more intentional desire to end her life when she was dying of cancer. One of my children threatened suicide prior to an intense two years of rehab and therapy and my husband had admittedly tried to drink himself to death during a time when I was in South Africa on a mission trip. I’ve had family members addicted to alcohol. Close friends have had friends or offspring with difficulties coping with life and unfortunately, some have resulted in suicide.

I have to first ask myself, “Why don’t we talk more about mental health and wellbeing?” I know that it seems like a somber topic, but we can’t keep pushing it aside. On my blog, the page that gets the most ‘hits’ is “Healing Prayer: For Those Suffering From Addiction.”

I’m going to start talking more about it and asking my friends frequently, “Are you okay? I’m here to just listen if you want to talk.”

It’s just a first step, but an important one in bringing Mental Health Awareness out into the sunlight.

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha