Rachael Newham
Rachael Newham is the mental health friendly church project manager at Kintsugi Hope and the author of two books. Her most recent is And Yet: Finding Joy in Lament.
Mental Health Awareness Week: what can your church do?
10 May 2022But what about in our churches? We may know the famous one in four statistic which tells us how many people might be affected by mental illness, but how can we talk about mental health in our churches in a way which elevates understanding, eradicates stigma and encourages compassion? The first step for us has to be one where, as the church, we name our position on mental health, because although the phrase “mental health” doesn’t appear in scripture, the concept is seen from Genesis to…
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Are you a mental health friendly church?
19 August 2021The state of the nation’s mental health doesn’t make for easy reading. Rates of depression have doubled since the beginning of the pandemic, one in six children between the ages of five and 16 are thought to have a mental illness, and suicide rates have been rising since 2018. Such stark and tragic statistics can make us feel helpless, wondering how on earth we begin to respond and what difference we can make amidst such hopelessness. The gospel is a living story of hope, but sometimes our…
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