Addressing our Mental Health Crisis : Amy Trout

Full-Text Transcript

How can your local church help effectively address mental health issues in your community?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Amy Trout. Amy is a psychologist who’s the founder and director of a private practice, Cornerstone Consultants. She also serves as the Chief Education Officer at Counterpoise. She’s the co-author of a new book entitled Beyond the Clinical Hour. Together, Amy and I look at the breadth of the current mental health crisis. Amy also shares some creative ways that the local church can partner with professional counselors to help address the mental health issues in your local community. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Every single week, I have the privilege, the honor, really, of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a topic all in an effort to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy rhythms for both your life and ministry. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we release an episode and a conversation every week, but our team also creates an entire toolkit available to you and to your team at your local church so that you can dig more deeply into the topic discussed. You can find that toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. And there you’ll find a ton of resources including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. We really encourage you to work through these insights and questions with your ministry team at your local church and just see how God is speaking to you through the topic that we’re discussing. Now, at Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders, and our trusted coaches are offering a complimentary coaching session. If you’d like to learn more about that opportunity, you can check that out at PastorServe.org/freesession. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We absolutely love getting to know our audience better and our team will be praying for you and for your ministry. Whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to subscribe or follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I’m very excited about today’s conversation. At this time, I’d like to welcome Amy Trout to the show. Amy, welcome.

Amy Trout
Thank you.

Jason Daye
Yeah, super excited to have you with us, Amy. And we’re going to dive into a topic that a lot of pastors and ministry leaders are aware of. We’re going to be talking about mental health issues. And as pastors and ministry leaders, oftentimes, we’re aware of the needs because of people in our congregation, and people in our community, we see these things, but we don’t always know how to meet those needs. And so I’m excited, Amy because we’re gonna talk about some really cool things that it seems that God is doing in the kingdom, bridging the gap between the church and professionals, such as yourself, who are counselors and therapists who are serving people in this area. So it’s gonna be a great conversation. But to begin with, Amy, I would love to hear from your perspective as a professional who has been serving in this area. A lot of people are wondering if mental health issues are on the rise. A lot of people make that assumption, right, that mental health issues are on the rise. Some people say, well, they may not necessarily be on the rise. It’s just that we’re more familiar with them, and we talk about them a little bit more, right? Or is it a little bit of both, Amy? Where are we when we look at and survey, especially here in the US, where are we when it comes to mental health?

Amy Trout
Yeah, well, I think it’s probably a combination of both, right? We do have places to talk about things that weren’t necessarily discussed as openly, say, 50 years ago. But also, we are seeing the numbers rise. Right now, each year, one in five adults presents with a mental health significant issue, and one in six youth, which is pretty staggering. If you think of the groups that you’re in, I think of classrooms, one in six of the kiddos are struggling, and that’s been identified. There’s some that have not been identified. And, unfortunately, it’s actually less than half of the people identified as having struggles and mental health challenges are actually receiving care. That’s a problem. The reasons are multifaceted, and sometimes there’s stigma, particularly in certain groups, there’s a stigma to seeing a counselor. Also, there are access issues and financial realities, and it’s expensive. But also, there just aren’t enough clinicians to see people. And that’s the point that, when Jim and I, Jim Sells the other co-author of the book, Jim and Heather Sells, when we started talking about this, that was his big thing. We both taught together at Regent and trained helpers, people who wanted to graduate and help people. But there’s no way we can train enough people to meet the need. So the numbers just don’t add up. The need is huge, and great training is happening. If you think of Christians who are students who attend Christian training programs, there are a lot of believers who want to help in this realm. But the scales are tipped. Even if we had enough funding for everyone to receive care, even if we had zero stigma, there are still not enough bodies that can do the one-hour, one-client-at-a-time session. That’s why the Beyond the Clinical Hour topic appealed to us as far as a title because even hour for hour, there are not enough spots. I can say personally, we faced this. I had a great insurance plan, one of my teenagers was having a really hard time, and we moved to a new state, and I thought, no big deal, we’ll get her into care down there. And my quote was my estimate through a PPO that was amazing and accepted everywhere was just under two years. And I thought, Wait, what? I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I’m like, two years. And that’s without stigma and without financial barriers. That’s incomprehensible. So, to be a parent, knowing your kiddo needs help, is such a frustrating position. But to be a kiddo who’s wanting help, eager to get help, it breaks my heart for the youth in particular because it breaks my heart for anyone who can’t access care, but for kids, their whole world, their identities aren’t fully developed yet. They’re going through so much development physically, emotionally, psychologically, and socially. They have school functioning that can haunt them if they have problems that impede their functioning in school. They have social needs that are huge during adolescence, and if they’re unable to be themselves, that gets impaired, and that follows us throughout our lives. And so it’s staggering, the amount of need and, likewise, the amount of discrepancy between the ability to meet that need. And that’s kind of where we began the conversation around what can be done.

Jason Daye
Yeah, what’s interesting, Amy, is that it’s really when you think of this as a mental health crisis. Oftentimes, when I hear the term “mental health crisis,” I’m thinking of the crisis specifically from the needs of the individuals who are suffering from mental health needs, which, as you said, is on the rise. But the crisis is more than that because the crisis is the other side, which is your side of it as the provider. The crisis is that there’s just not enough care available to those who need it. There are those other impediments to getting that care, whether it’s financial, whether it’s kind of cultural stigmas and those types of things. So, it’s interesting to look at the broad picture, which is so helpful for you to help us through that. Now, one of the things that you said, which I think is staggering, is that 50% of people, half the people who actually have mental health issues, needs, or struggles, are not getting care. And if we were to kind of think about that in physical health, people that have some sort of physical health need, if we were to think that half of the people that have a physical health need are unable to access care in some way, everyone would be like, well, that’s, Wow, that’s crazy, you know what I mean? So it’s one of those things where with mental health, sometimes it’s hidden a little in so many ways, right? So, Amy, help us with this. If that is the need, and it seems like it’s continuing to increase, and so that gap is just going to continue to grow between the ability to provide the care and those who need the care. Amy, what are some of the things that you have experienced in your own life or in your own practice that maybe can help bridge that gap? Specifically, and this is what you write about in Beyond the Clinical Hours, this idea of how do professional counselors or therapists, come into partnership with local churches. So, help us understand how this can be a way to help speak into this growing need.

Amy Trout
Yeah, well, when you think of churches, there are plenty of churches, right? There are churches and what’s inside the church is typically a huge body of people who care deeply and who have made it through some circumstances that have been life-altering. I mean, they’re real people that predominantly have received the gospel message. I’m not saying we’re not still broken, we are. But receive the message and care deeply about other human beings and their functioning and their flourishing. And so, when you consider that there is literally a sea of lay people and volunteers that really want to help people, it seems so natural to think, how do we connect these dots? Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that someone who has what we would consider a serious mental condition disorder or is in an extremely potentially harmful situation with their mental health be adequately met by giving them to a lay leader in isolation. But also, the fact that the church tends to be the first place that people turn to for care for those both within the church and sometimes people that aren’t even a part of the church when a crisis becomes profound enough it’s not uncommon for them to pick up the phone and call their local pastor. So the fact that the church is an institution that’s already such a part of people’s lives, worlds, and communities, it can be a natural place for them to turn. We speak with pastors all the time and they are absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of need that comes their way in people care. Some of this is the more extreme. I mean, I wish I could say that mental health professionals can work themselves out of jobs forever. That won’t be the case, there will be a place for those referrals. But there’s also a place for those for the wraparound care, for the faith community to join alongside and offer supportive services if someone is getting external care from a provider. But also for preventative care and community-based care. And the caregivers, whether they realize it or not, they’re doing a lot of the work that is being done by mental health practitioners by listening, attending, encouraging, and being a safe place. So we’re not saying that they’re necessarily equal roles, but they’re also not necessarily completely distinct roles. There’s a lot of really amazing work that is and can still be done through care ministries and church-supported work. Sometimes, the thing is to make sure that those ministries are sort of aiming in the right direction. Okay, so I’ll give an example of a church that I’m very close to here in southwest Florida. One of the first things I did with them was they had a chaplain, brilliant man, who loved people, loved Jesus, just a really amazing man who had worked with people for years and years at the church. He said, so before we refer people out, like how do we know when that point is? Because he was very willing to meet with people week after week and he had a whole team. And so we developed a triage system for the church so that they had some resources and tools to use internally but also some flags and some places for how to refer out. We developed, really training is what it was, around confidentiality because oftentimes the church would then reach out to the counseling center and say, Hey, how was so and so doing? They didn’t quite understand at first that we really couldn’t discuss this from our perspective. But they did understand it once we clarified. So some training around how our profession works, but also really how the church works, and trying to develop a legal yet respectful way of communicating around these things. And often, that was pre-communication ahead of time. And then creating even protocols. We received a call once that, in a weekly meeting, a prayer team member had talked about her concern for someone that she had met after service, prayed with, and then they left. She was worried because the person was stating that they were suicidal. And she’s like, what else could I have done? I didn’t know what to do. So we kind of wrapped around and did some training, even around proper protocols for safety, ways to really ensure that those types of situations don’t sort of happen, and no one’s left with that haunting feeling of I just didn’t do enough. And it was haunting her enough to bring it up in that next week’s meeting. These are big hearts, full of love, who want to help. And so my vision has been how can people from the mental health field come alongside to partner, just support, to strengthen the resources that are already there within the churches, and also, if there are new, I might be getting ahead of myself. But if there are new things that they want or new programs that they have for a variety of issues. If they’re running programs, or if they want to launch a specific program aimed at, we’ll just say, divorce care, right? A divorce care program, for example. Making sure that they’re really using their resources wisely. And so we are kind of helping do program development work, needs assessments, if they’re trying to reach out within the church community, or the broader community kind of looking at what the needs are, and how many programs already sort of exist. Is this something where there’s a lot of passion in the church? If someone’s been through something and they’re on the other side, oftentimes, they’ll want to launch a program for that specific issue. But is that the best use of resource based on what is presenting in the community and what else is available, right? We have heard too many times churches say, well, we launched this and no one showed up, we marketed it, we had this couple that was super passionate. And there was one member the first week and none the next, right? So we want to help reduce that because we want to help the churches be very effective with the resources that they have as well because that can feel discouraging. It can also be kind of financially disappointing if they’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into a certain program. So it’s kind of a multi-faceted approach. But really what we want to do is capitalize on the work that’s already being done in the church or the work that can be done in the church based on that specific Church’s vision for what they’re about. Not every church is going to do a clothing closet, or whatever. They all have their own ministries and they’re in alignment with their mission. But based on the specific church, how can we come alongside and support based on our training, whether that’s research training, people care training or educational resources? How can we come alongside and support the work that’s being done? And that’s the kind of partnership I’m talking about. The numbers are mind-boggling of need. But if we can help increase a collaborative impact on the communities through the institutions that already exist and love people and want to help people, it’s such a win. The potential for early intervention or even prevention, that stuff can’t be measured. But if someone is feeling isolated, disconnected, and lonely, and something opens up at their church where they get that sense of connection, inclusion, and involvement and their mood shifts into a more hopeful place. That could have been a preventative step that we may never hear about. But great, that’s what we hope to do.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I mean, you share some very practical ways which I think are important for us. Because oftentimes in a local church setting, like you said, we have big hearts and we do recognize that there are needs. And sometimes we can highlight certain needs or people who are passionate about specific needs, but as you said, that may not be the most prevalent need for your community. So there is this opportunity for contextualization is what I hear. You’re saying, how do we best understand our community because an urban church might have much different needs than a rural church, for example, or whatever it might be? So, Amy, it’s very helpful those practical ways. One of the things that I was thinking through as I was reading your book, was this idea behind, there are some churches that are larger churches and have more resources. And so they may have a kind of Counseling Center kind of built-in, or a nonprofit, 501C3 type counseling center that they support and so that is helpful and makes sense. And oftentimes, pastors think Oh, yeah, those are things are happening at larger churches. But you’ve given some examples. In the book, you talked about different things that churches of all sizes, in all different types of churches where they can kind of partner with professionals in the mental health community. So can you talk to us a little bit, you gave us some practical examples, but can you talk to us a little bit about maybe reframing the way that the local church views how they can assist, and that it doesn’t have to be a fully-funded large counseling center, but yet, they can still make an impact?

Amy Trout
Sure, yeah. So, I kind of want to start out with, I don’t assume that every partnership would be a great one, right? So it’s really important that when you think of collaborating with a mental health professional from the church perspective, don’t underestimate how important it is to have a shared vision and have some sense of a mutual sense of shared values. Trust needs to be there and that really is best grown through a natural relationship, right? So, it would be tricky for me to imagine a pastor calling up just a mental health counselor from Google pages, and saying, hey, we want you to come into our church and do some stuff. I believe that the pastors that I have known have such a huge sense of responsibility over their congregation. And so I am not advocating for just sort of bringing someone on board. But getting to know if there are people in your community that you already know, getting to know them better. If they’re in the field, or if someone approaches you, if there is someone that you’re interested in meeting, you’ve heard they’re a shared faith practitioner, then developing some time to get to know that person, personally, so that you can feel like it’s a mutually trusting collaboration. That you’re not going to worry about giving someone access to your people or your programs. Ideally, it would come really from within the congregation itself. And that’s one of the calls in the book that we hope to say clearly is for Christian mental health practitioners to really reach out to their pastors, to the pastors that they already worship under, trust, and are led by. And to offer their services, but also to build relationships. This is not cut and dry. I’m not saying like, let’s figure out a way to build your business up, that’s really not it. In fact, I’m a big advocate for donating services to your own church in these ways, if that’s a possible and reasonable request of people. But making sure that that synergy between the hearts, I guess, exists so that people can move forward with competence in collaborative relationships. So I guess that’s kind of the background, a long background, to beginning a partnership. But the partnerships can take so many forms, that there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. So sometimes it may look like having a counselor that you feel comfortable referring people to for high-need cases, right? Sometimes it could look more like, there are so many examples, I’m gonna go with a really easy one of serving as a consultant to the pastor or to the ministry team. What that looks like, I will say, from my own life, I may get a call or a text at any given moment, do you have a few minutes? And it could be anything from Can you peek at the sermon and let me know if there’s anything that needs a little alteration? There’s some sense of content here, just from your perspective, or here’s the program we’re planning for the youth group. Here are concerns, we’ve had these sorts of struggles, and we’re just kind of wanting a different set of eyes looking, is there anything we’re missing? Is there anything you’d add in? Are there any other guideposts or any kind of safety nets that we need to have in place ahead of time before we dive into this topic? Sometimes it’s collaborating on an unfortunate behavioral event that’s occurred at the church and trying to figure out ways to take care of all of the parties involved. And do that in ways that align with legal standards, but also, really great people care. And some of those conversations can be challenging, and they can take some time, but just sort of being an extra voice at the table, I guess, that has a different perspective. I think that I can strengthen that work. I’m just sort of, I feel like I’m someone, I’m in a lot of people’s back pocket and I like that. Like, give me a ring. A challenging situation came up today in a staff meeting, what do I do? What happened and just sometimes it’s super fast. It’s a quick phone call, email, or text. Other times, it’s a little more complex. But what a privilege. What an amazing role to be a part of. These guys are on the frontline. These guys and ladies, when I say guys, I mean everyone, but they’re on the frontline of care. My picture always has been in my mind, Moses with Aaron and Hur, and he got tired, and they needed to come alongside and just hold up his arms, right? So I’m an arm holder, you know? Let me just hold your arm for a minute because you’re doing it. You’re on the frontlines here. And so if I can be a supportive resource in any way, that’s beautiful. Sometimes it becomes more formalized. You know, there may be a project or I consulted with a church that was growing faster than they knew what to do with. They had so many ministry ideas and so many directions they thought they should go and wanted to go based on the passion of the leaders really. And they had the foresight to think, this may or may not be in line with what we should be doing, right? Like, what does our community actually need?  So we did a pretty comprehensive needs assessment, both within the church but also within the community to try to figure out what of their areas they really wanted to chase after, which ones sort of seemed to take priority and which ones didn’t based on what people actually had access to and expressed a need for. We actually came up with a few other ideas that they hadn’t come up with, based on the feedback from the community, that helped guide their rollout and their planning of their ministry rollout. So it’s kind of a targeted approach to development. You know, there’s all kinds of ways. There’s a lot of different things. You can do seminars. We’ve done seminars for church leaders in our community, like brown bags and breakfast meetings. Typically, we’ll present a topic that was already suggested, and then we’ll ask them to give feedback but also to suggest other topics that could be useful for them with their leaders when we do those because I don’t presume I know what the church leaders need. I’m doing my own needs assessment on my end. But just sharing resources and making sure that people have what they need. A pastor’s job, I am in awe of what ministry leaders do because it’s not nine to five. I know that for sure. And a lot of the 24-hour-a-day work, I know I don’t know about. I hear about things here and there, but I’m like, this is probably 100 of what actually goes on. So I admire them and any way that I can support or be a resource to that. Let me hold the arm.

Jason Daye
Amy, I love those examples that you gave because I think that oftentimes, whenever we think from the perspective of your thinking, again, from a local church perspective, and you’re thinking of, okay, how can we partner with a professional and address some of these needs? Oftentimes, it is like, okay, we can refer people who have needs to them as a counselor, right? Like, they’re the things that we just kind of fall into. But just the idea of being that resource and being that person that says hey, yeah, we are working on a sermon series and we want to make sure we’re sensitive to some of these topics. Can you help us process through that? I mean there are so many different ways that you shared that just kind of expand our minds as to how this partnership can come together, which is a beautiful thing. And as you’ve said, there’s so much creativity and it’s a trait of God, obviously. So, for our churches to be able to think creatively about what is it God’s calling us into and how can we partner with professionals in this area to serve in an even more effective way and make a greater impact for the Kingdom. Absolutely love it. Amy, If people want to connect with you, if they could do that, learn more about the book Beyond the Clinical Hour, and those types of things. What are some ways, I’m just thinking about kind of resourcing, not that I want your phone just ringing nonstop, but what are some ways that people could connect? If pastors or missionaries are thinking man, I would love to lean into this more. Help us understand some ways that we can do that.

Amy Trout
Yeah. So we have a Facebook page called Church Consultation. We also have a website, I will say, it’s thin, it leads you to the Facebook page. I’m learning as I go because I’m no web developer. That’s www.ChurchConsultation.net. So we’re hoping that that can help drive conversations. I’m hoping it can grow organically if there’s interest with people who want to jump on, whether they’re in the field as mental health or as ministry leaders if they want to connect, share resources, ask questions, consult, or collaborate. Again, it’s not like this is a one-size-fits-all approach. We can’t be like, well, here’s the survey I use for our church because they’re going to look very different and they should. They really should be very individualized and specific to the churches. But for basic guidance or strategy sharing, we can do that and I would love to do that with people. So that’s a great way that we can all continue to learn from each other. I’m happy for people to reach out to me individually, but then it’s just the one way dialogue and no one can really learn from that. I’m thinking we have to have something a little bit different. So, that’s a great way to do it. Yeah, I’m not a big social media person, just Facebook.

Jason Daye
Excellent. And for those of you who are watching or listening along, we will have links to the Facebook group that Amy talked about. We’ll have some links, obviously, to the book Beyond the Clinical Hour. An absolutely fantastic resource that also includes a lot of examples of ministries and churches and different things that are going on to kind of give you some real-world examples, not just all theoretical, it has rewarded examples, which I really appreciated. So we’ll have links to all of that in the toolkit for this episode, which you can find at PastorServe.org/network. So be sure to check that out and avail yourself of all those awesome resources. And be thinking about how at your local church how God might be stirring among your team or among your people in a way that you can creatively and prayerfully see where God is leading you in terms of addressing the mental health crisis that we see today. So, Amy, absolutely appreciate you making time to hang out with us on FrontStage BackStage, thank you for your insights, and thank you for the book, and the resources that you’ve provided. And I’m excited to see what God does with this because as you said, this seems like it could be a perfect partnership to really address a major, major need in our world today. I love your heart and coming alongside local churches and seeing what God has in store and how we can serve. So, thank you.

Amy Trout
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I love talking about this area and I feel like it’s got a lot of untapped potential. And the benefits really extend to all of us. I mean, it’s a joy to be a part of on my side of things and I’ve gotten amazing feedback from churches and just really have developed some very deep friendships and relationships through this work. So I encourage others to explore a new area.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Amy. God bless you.

Amy Trout
Thank you, you too.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.