Morgen Makombo Sikwila
Most individuals with mental health needs do not receive professional care. One strategy to narrow this service provision gap is task-shifting, a process where certain responsibilities are shifted to less specialized workers. Most of those who seek mental health care turn to clergy.
Health professionals use contemplative practices, the use of positive electromagnetic vibrations to speed up mental health recovery; spirituality and religion bring love, hope, happiness, and compassion. Self-transcendence increases cortisol and serotonin receptor binding, suppresses norepinephrine, and reduces mental health issues. Mental health professionals must respect preferences, record religious beliefs, provide spiritual materials, and encourage socialisation. Self-determination, autonomy, and choice should be prioritised in mental health care. This therapy is significant, long-term, and undeniable effect is undisputed.
Clergy attract favourable comparisons with psychiatrists, reflecting fairly traditional views of clergy as helpful, caring, individuals who offer long-term care to the ‘whole person’. Where religion or spirituality plays an important role in the life of the individual, clergy are seen as better equipped careers than psychiatric professionals who are contrasted as cold, mechanical, uninvolved and short-term. Despite the demand for greater collaboration between clergy and mental health services little might be known about their experience of mental health pastoral care or the willingness of clergy to engage in such partnerships.
Are clergy able to recognise psychiatric symptoms and are they more tolerant of mental illness than members of the community? The views of mental illness and the mentally ill among clergy are likely to have important implications in terms of pathways to appropriate care and their relationship with psychiatric services, compliance with treatment and outcomes also for their subsequent relationships with their ‘church’.
The transfer of psychiatric care from institutions to the community presents community structures including faith-based organisations with additional burden of care. In recent years there has been an increasing policy interest among government departments, public and non-statutory agencies for the inclusion of faith based organizations as partners in health and welfare services. However, despite their long historical involvement in healing and healthcare, clergy are seldom viewed by mental health professionals as partners in healing and restitution but with suspicion. This may be compounded by ignorance about mental health care provision within faith based organizations in countries like Zimbabwe and the preparedness, confidence and willingness to undertake such care.
There are some barriers and dilemmas for clergy in caring for people with mental illness. Clergy play an important but often confined role the scale and impact of which is not recognised by their central organisation and training bodies. Low confidence about managing psychiatric problems, underscored by anxiety, fear and stereotyped attitudes to mental illness restrain their willingness to formalise their function. Any proposed extension of clergy involvement in mental health requires further research and thorough deliberation by mental health services and religious organisations.
Despite the advance of secularism religious and spiritual belief, regardless of form, remains strong. In Zimbabwe , even though regular church-going activity is reported as low ñof the population going to church , majority of the population claim to be a Christian affiliation, an expression, perhaps, of ethnic or cultural identity rather than commitment.
Regardless of the rapid change in religious beliefs, behaviour and organisation there appears to be a renewed social policy interest in the counter-anomic potential of faith-based organisations. Thus, in addition to the private, devotional and symbolic roles of the church, its social function has been long viewed as a community resource for people where religious identities and other aspects of identity such as ethnicity, class and gender are affirmed and reinforced. Thus religion provides the basis for association and also a system of shared meanings. In Zimbabwe, the church has long provided a focus of political mobilisation and also a major welfare functions.
Broadly speaking, healing of the individual and of society has been observed as central functions of religion. Many of the current health care systems across the world can be traced to religious institutions. There is a considerable body of evidence, predominantly that community based clergy have significant contact with people who suffer from mental health problems, many of whom prefer the help of clergy rather than psychiatric professionals. In some countries, there are some religious-based beliefs about mental illness and other misfortune that may influence help-seeking and compliance with treatment.
While many faith based organizations maintain a welfare role, the nature or status of this position is unclear, complicated by a range of pastoral and leadership styles between and within religions such as ritual-focussed, pedagogical, charismatic, bureaucratic, democratic or authoritarian and so on. In relation to aspects of caring, there is some, albeit limited, evidence that clergy attract favourable comparisons with psychiatrists, reflecting fairly traditional views of clergy as helpful, caring, individuals who offer long-term care to the ‘whole person.’ In particular, where religion or spirituality plays an important role in the life of the individual, clergy are seen as better equipped carers than psychiatric professionals who are contrasted as cold, mechanical, uninvolved and short-term. Indeed, religious service users offer mixed accounts of their relationship with clergy. Despite the demand for greater collaboration between clergy and mental health services, little is known about their experience of mental health pastoral care or the willingness of clergy to engage in such partnerships.
Are clergy able to recognise psychiatric symptoms and are they more tolerant of mental illness than members of the community?
Clergy from all faith based organizations, willingly or otherwise, play an important but often confused role in the care of people with mental health problems. The scale and impact of this role remains under-recognised by their central organisations and the training bodies who prepare clergy for ministry. Despite calls from user groups and the voluntary sector, mental health services continue to neglect a valuable resource in the community and fail to engage with the beliefs and values of the clergy. Many individuals who experience mental and emotional problems however seek support from clergy instead of formal mental health services. Clergy are often sought out by those with mental illnesses and it is essential to understand their perspectives about mental and emotional problems and identify the individual characteristics that influence these perspectives.
Ordained as public, authorized functionaries for religious organizations, clergy are constituted the occupational class responsible for formulating, interpreting, and preserving tradition, scriptures, and doctrines, and presiding over the worship and pastoral concerns of their religious communities.
Morgen Makombo Sikwila
MSc Peace and Governance
BSc Counselling
Diploma in Environmental Health
Certificate in Marketing Management
email address: morgensikwilam@gmail.com
Phone Number: 0772823282
