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Comfort for the comforters: Pandemic brings attention to mental health of faith community leaders

The Blade - 5/31/2020

May 31--Her church isn't open, but the pastor is busier than ever.

It's a new normal of sorts for the Rev. Rose Russell, who leads Payne Memorial AME Church in Holland. Since her community ceased in-person worship in March, she's shifted her pastoral duties to emails, phone calls, text messages and video conferences. It feels like she's always hopping between one virtual appointment and another these days, she said; like she's always drafting a text message to check in with one parishioner or answering a call from another.

"It may not sound like a lot, but it is," she said. "It can be taxing."

The pastor isn't alone in finding her role dramatically altered or even expanded since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March -- or in her conscientiousness about carving out a few minutes for herself here and there. For Rev. Russell, it's been snatches of exercise outdoors or on a stationary bike, among other day-to-day routines she finds important as self-care.

If faith leaders are always advised to be mindful of their own mental health, it's become acutely important under a pandemic that's upended the way they care for their congregations. Add in the weight of their own and their community's concerns related to the pandemic -- the loved ones who can't be visited in hospitals, the financial implications of a breadwinner's layoff -- and they're in a position to particularly feel the effects of all that's happening.

NAMI Greater Toledo is exploring some of these implications for faith leaders through its Mental Health Faith Council, which in April began hosting weekly workshops on Thursdays over Zoom. "Coping with COVID-19: Fatigue Compassion is Real" is slated next for 11:30 a.m. Thursday; another workshop is set for June 25.

Contact the organization for access links or more information through namitoledo.org.

In line with the broader mission of the long-standing faith council, the workshops have sought to equip faith leaders to help their congregants work through their anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns, recognizing that a faith leader is often in a position to hear about these issues. They also notably bring attention to the mental health of the faith leaders themselves -- an element that's become particularly important under the current circumstances.

"Faith community leaders tend to be people who reach out and give more of themselves and are eager to give more of themselves," said Jeffrey Bischoff, a co-presenter at an early workshop. "Sometimes that can result in giving a little too much, wearing one's self out, wearing one's self down."

Mr. Bischoff is the senior program/clinical manager for Lutheran Social Services of Northwestern Ohio. He's also a pastor himself at Zion Lutheran Church in Montpelier.

"I liken it to what they tell you on airplanes when the oxygen masks come down, that if you're traveling with someone that you need to care for, make sure you put your own mask on first," he continued. "When we're working so hard to get masks on other people, to keep them going, we're not paying attention to our own needs."

The Rev. Russell sees the situation similarly. She's long been calling attention to the importance of self-care for pastors, an issue that became personal to her during a years-ago sabbatical that made it clear to her that caring for herself is foundational to her ability to care for others.

"If we don't take care of ourselves," she said, "we cannot help other people."

Who comforts the comforters?

If faith community leaders excel at caring for others, research suggests that the same cannot be said when it comes to caring for themselves.

Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell is an associate professor at the Duke Global Health Institute. As research director for the Duke Clergy Health Initiative, she's looked extensively into the mental health of clergy under the United Methodist Church in North Carolina. She said her and others' similar findings can reasonably be extrapolated to a broader swath of the nation's clergy.

That research indicates higher levels of depression among clergy than the adult population in the United States, she said. While a clear comparison is not as readily available for anxiety rates, she said it's reasonable to think that rates of anxiety, too, are elevated among clergy.

Why is that?

Professor Proeschold-Bell and her team have been digging into the question for years, and she points to several elements of the job that research suggests contribute: Pastors typically have busy, fragmented and unpredictable days, for example; they deal with criticism from their congregations that, in some cases, don't see them as whole human beings.

There's also sanctification theory, she suggested, explaining it as the idea that "when your work is sacred, you will over-extend yourself on a regular basis to protect your work and to do it well and you'll be very emotional about it -- that is, you're passionate about it."

"There's nothing wrong with that," she continued. "It can be really good for us to occasionally work super hard on a project, and lay it all out on the line, but what I see clergy doing as I've talked to them over these years is that they just do that all the time. What we know about people is that you can't do that 365 days a year without it taking some kind of emotional toll."

If her research to date has offered a baseline look at mental health among clergy, then a pandemic raises new complications. Ms. Proeschold-Bell suggested there could be a bright spot, if the frustrating or petty details of running a parish have taken a back seat as congregations have prioritized their mission and their ministry under new circumstances.

But much of the impact she sees as difficult: She's thinking about pastors that are dealing with hard-hit church finances, for example; she's thinking about the emotional weight of working with grieving congregants and an eventual wave of memorial services, when families who lost loved ones during the pandemic are finally able to gather together.

"That's going to be a lot of grief and emotional labor around sadness," she said, pointing out that such a wave could extend for a year or more. "Right now, pastors' day are kind of balanced with some baptisms and some weddings. It will be very unbalanced in a difficult direction."

Taking care on Zoom

In the individual squares of a video conference screen, local faith leaders have been gathering to work through together some of these concerns on Thursdays. Since NAMI Greater Toledo's Mental Health Faith Council hosted its first workshop on April 23, they've covered a wide variety of topics related to the impact of the pandemic; it's both an opportunity to take in ideas and resources, as well as to share one's own questions and experiences.

NAMI Greater Toledo Executive Director Robin Isenberg described the workshops as an extension of the mission of the long-standing faith council. Its members, who meet monthly in gatherings that are open to the public, recognize an intersection between mental health and faith.

"A lot of folks turn to their faith leaders for support," Ms. Isenberg said. "They may not recognize that they're struggling with mental health issues, and the first person they might go to is a faith leaders: 'OK, I'm having these struggles in my life. How can you navigate me through this?'"

NAMI seeks to educate and equip these faith leaders to handle these situations through the faith council, including how to know when it's best to refer someone to a professional, she said. And as has become particularly important under the pandemic, they also seek to support faith leaders in prioritizing their own mental health.

"Compassion fatigue is a huge thing," she said. "We;re hearing from a lot of pastors who say they're tired, they're stressed out. They feel awful because someone in a family dies and they can't have a big funeral. It's hard for people to grieve."

Gretchen Hiatt is a familiar figure at NAMI Greater Toledo's Mental Health Faith Council. She's the parish nurse at Grace Lutheran Church, where, like Rev. Russell at Payne Memorial AME Church, she's been adjusting to busy days that look quite a bit different than they did even just earlier this year. She spends long hours on the phone, continually checking in with members of her church; she's also working on her church's plan to safely re-open.

A co-presenter at one workshop, and a participant in others, she said she's found the workshops helpful. She also shares the resources with her parish nurse network.

"I think they're very helpful," she said. "Some of it is things that we know, but it helps put it back in perspective and you re-think things through."

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