A mental health tsunami?

Dave Burke

Is it really true that the pandemic is causing a tsunami of mental-health problems?

I thought so until a recent article by Richard Benthall, a Professor of Clinical Psychology, made me think again. Benthall is a member of the Covid-19 Psychological Research Consortium which has been monitoring the nation’s mental health since Lockdown 1 in March 2020.

Their research is ongoing, but it is already clear that the tsunami narrative may not be helpful. For sure, some people and communities have suffered badly, especially those who had previously suffered from mental-health difficulties. The poor, the young and those with small children at home have also done badly.

Yet others have flourished. People with a job have often saved money and enjoyed working from home. Some have even loved having the kids around all day!

On top of this, Benthall points out that whereas individual trauma (such as an assault) is very damaging, collective trauma is less so. When a community faces a challenge together their sense of belonging and shared identity contributes to individual resilience.

This is why churches are so important and, tsunami or not, why we need to be good at supporting those who have suffered. Taking a fresh look at the Scriptures has greatly helped me personally. Among the many questions we rightly ask of a text, I have learned one more: ‘What is the writer feeling and why?’ This can be especially helpful in the Psalms.

Sometimes, the Bible is so honest we can hardly bear to look at it and see what is there. Psalm 88 is one example, when he sings, ‘Darkness is my only friend’ you know the writer, Heman the Ezrathite, was in a bad place. Why is it even in the Bible? Because God allows the lived experience of the writer to show us how some people feel. It is terrifying, but as we look steadily into his darkness we can gain a godly insight into what looks very like some sort of mood disorder. Heman’s song invites us to become better equipped for every good work – such as supporting a friend facing something similar. This is called empathy, an ability to feel someone else’s pain even if you have not experienced those circumstances yourself. Research tells us that being listened to by someone who feels a little of the weight of our troubles is profoundly therapeutic. The Bible tells us the same thing and it can help us to learn that skill. Of course, it is easy for those who have flourished through lockdown to be sceptical of others whose mental wellbeing has declined. Why can’t they just pull themselves together? Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who had his own mental health problems, tackled this head-on in this comment on Psalm 88: ‘It is all very well for those who are in robust health and full of spirits to blame those whose lives are sicklied o’er with the pale cast of melancholy, but the evil is as real as a gaping wound … Reader, never ridicule the nervous and hypochondriacal, their pain is real; though much of it lies in the imagination it is not imaginary’. Plague, famine, captivity, invasion, and exile – or the fear of them – were common experiences for the people of the Bible; they have a thing or two to teach us about trauma. As we emerge from lockdown and square up to the pastoral needs of our communities we would do well to listen.