Email erin@emergentgrace.com with ideas for additional resources to add.
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988, 24/7). For more information, go to https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/988
See additional resources and hotlines: https://www.mhn-ucc.org/resources/resource-links/
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): https://www.nami.org/
- NAMI education: https://nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education
- NAMI Faith Net: https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/NAMI-FaithNet
Inclusive, loving services for suffering youth:
- Teen line, great for teens in crisis, and staffed by highly-trained teens: https://www.teenline.org/
- https://www.charliehealth.com/, used by a beloved friend whose child was in crisis and needed outpatient, intensive psychological care. Highly recommend.
Addiction/Substance Use Disorder can accompany mental health conditions. Seek professional help and try, in no particular order,
- https://www.celebraterecovery.com/, or
- https://www.aa.org/, or https://na.org/, or, more broadly, https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
Objectively the best book for navigating the mental health system in the US:
- You Are Not Alone, by Ken Duckworth, PhD.
- It helps you get your footing in the very difficult-to-navigate US mental health scene.
Online trainings for spirituality-based mental health awareness:
- mentalhealthgateway.org, which is part of the Hope and Healing Center Institute: https://hopeandhealingcenter.org/
- Spiritual First Aid: https://www.spiritualfirstaid.org/
- The center for faith-based partnerships: https://www.hhs.gov/about/agencies/iea/partnerships/index.html
The Partnership Center Webinar on spirituality and mental health:
- Spirituality in Treatment: Systemic Models Bridging Faith & Mental Health Professionals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBWJ7CV2EPE)
- Spirituality and Post-Traumatic Growth: Spirituality as Catalyst for Resilience (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dWKeMKcAjo)
- Spirituality and Severe Mental Illness: Questions of Recovery versus Purposeful Renewal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zevd6Uzlg-4)
- Spirituality and the Lifetime Course of Mental Illness: Support by the Faith Community (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmheuxcLW9s)
- Spirituality and Treatment Relationships: Contributions to Faith and Forgiveness in Recovery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzlWuFocHm0)
- Spirituality and Community-wide Crisis: Building Systems to Support Connection and Recovery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0cw7ymzJ9k)
Restoration through storytelling:
- https://theallendercenter.org/
- https://www.thewritersworkshop.net/, great writing lessons, and (as of 6/2023, many online, though subject to change)
Explore the website of Nancy Kehoe, RSCJ, PhD, a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart and adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, including her wonderful YouTube videos, linked to her website: https://expandingconnections.com/
Books by Erin Michael Grimm on mental health:
- Emergent Grace: Christian Hope for Serious Mental Illness–shares frameworks Erin has used to thrive with mental illness, and was written for clergy, sufferers, and their friends and families. Don’t skip the appendix, which features my most popular blog posts
- What I Remember of the Little I Understand: A Memoir of Finding Mental Health in Christ (forthcoming, mid 2023)–written for people in their teens and twenties just getting diagnosed, and also touches on complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD)
- The Nine Principles of Hope: On Making a Difference as a Christian (forthcoming, 2024)–a framework for being Christian while suffering greatly from mental affliction
Christian Mental Health Authors
- Peter Bellini, Truth Therapy – which I use as a devotional
- Amy Simpson, Troubled Minds – good for church members supporting mental health
- Katherine Greene-McCreight, Darkness is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness
Sexual Abuse/Trauma
A lot of books are triggering and upsetting, but these two are solid:
- Peter Levine, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
- Phillip Zombardo, Richard and Emily Sword, The Time Cure: Overcoming PTSD with the New Psychology of Time Perspective Therapy
This book could be triggering, but it is healing if you’ve built up to it. Very healing about how to frame sexual abuse in the church compassionately:
- Brent Peterson and Diane Leclerc, The Backside of the Cross: An Atonement Theology for the Abused and the Abandoned
Secular Mental Health Memoirs
As I say in my book, some memoirs are pretty risqué. The two that are essential are:
- Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness [schizophrenia]
- Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness [bipolar disorder]