Video Transcript: Final Thoughts

Welcome back to the final session of mental health integration. It has been such  a pleasure to be with you. Let's go ahead and step in on this session. We are  going to be talking about covid, and what covid did to the mental health status.  There's a lot of studies that have come out of the United States, so we're going  to talk a little bit about that, and then we're going to talk a little bit about the  future of mental health moving forward, because we're seeing some interesting  trends, and I want you to be aware of those, because you're going to be  stepping into those trends in your churches. And of course, things are subject to  change. They always do. None of us are great at predicting exactly what's going to happen in the future, but we can see some trends that say there's going to be  some interesting things going on. First off, let's go ahead and start with  coronavirus. Now, with the covid 19 pandemic, we saw some very interesting  things that we had just never planned on, because we hadn't really planned on a pandemic, at least I hadn't in the mental health world, what we saw is, when  everything shut down, the rates of certain mental health issues skyrocketed. The rates of other mental health issues didn't the rates of some issues just exploded. But then there were also other things that changed altogether that are kind of  changing the fabric of how people live a little bit. So first off, when everything  happened and lockdowns happen and all of that, so many people moved to  working from home, and some of those moves, I mean, we're two years into the  pandemic now, you can tell us how it's going when you watch or when you're  going through this class, because it's probably changed again, but that move to  stay at home meant that people were home and that there was less help  available elsewhere. So unfortunately, we saw domestic violence raise incredibly we also saw people begin to isolate because we couldn't not isolate. That was  the whole point was to isolate. And while isolating, we saw opioid use increase.  We saw addictions increase. We saw alcoholism and especially like  pornography addictions increase, and then we also saw some mental health  issues like depression skyrocket. The rates of depression at different points of  the pandemic was three to five times higher than normal. At points that there  were surveys done during the pandemic where the rate of depression was  eclipsing 50% when it's normally around 10. I also saw rates of anxiety during  the pandemic and some of the surveys that were between 35 and 50% when it's normally around 20. The fact is, the pandemic did some nasty things to people's  mental health. There were worries about, am I going to get sick? Is this going to  kill me? Are schools ever going to reopen? Are my kids ever going to go back to  school? What's going to happen to my parents because they're older? What if  these people get vaccinated? What if these people don't get vaccinated. All of  these things ended up causing huge amounts of stress, and it really caused  people a lot of just hardness in life, right? So with that being said, what did we  learn from the covid 19 pandemic? A few things, actually. One, pandemics are  bad for your mental health in a lot of ways. But two, ironically, less people kill 

themselves, the suicide rate in 2020 was lower than it was in 2019 or 2018 if I  remember correctly, we're watching the suicide rate drop instead of rise when  we absolutely expected it to rise. I saw initial estimates when the pandemic  began that they expected this suicide rate to be anywhere from 15% higher to  300% higher than it was the previous year. There were some estimates that said that the suicide rate would actually come close to the rate of number of deaths  from covid At the very beginning, it wasn't even close, not even close. Less than  50,000 people died of suicide in 2020 and the pandemic is killed by a factor of  10 more than that. So we saw that for some reason, there was something going  on where suicide was down, but anxiety and depression were up. We also saw  severe mental illness basically just kind of hang out and stay the same. So this  was people experiencing more acute anxiety and more acute depression in their normal lives, and that was actually leading to this big charge of mental health  problems. We also don't know the long term effects of what's going to happen  with kids in schools, and all of that. We'll find out. If we've learned anything  about people, it's that people break inside, and so some of those things need  help to get repaired, but also people are astoundingly resilient and bounce back  from things that you go there's no way they're going to bounce back from and  then they do. And we're seeing that in some ways, and I'm sure we're going to  see that in 20 or 30 years. We're going to see all sorts of different ways that  people have reacted and responded that are so different than what we know.  But really, I think we're not going to see that data until further down the road.  We'll see pieces of it, and we'll see evidences of it, and then we'll see it grow so  you'll have to inform your classmates someday what you're seeing with the new  data that's out since it's not out right now, with covid, one of the other things we  saw is that covid created a space where this Genesis 1-2 way of living, this very  open way of living that was much more vulnerable, just did not exist because it  couldn't exist because the whole point of social isolation was to make sure that  we didn't accidentally kill our neighbor, and instead, we isolate, and it creates a  place where we're hiding, where we're hiding behind the leaves. And I am not  saying that's a bad thing, by the way. You have to take you have to do what you  need to do during a pandemic. That is a reality. But I am saying that socially,  we're not designed for that. And I think what you see with these depression and  with these anxiety numbers is the reaction to that. There have also been surveys done, especially by the New York Times, about which people are feeling anxiety, especially about the pandemic. And it's really interesting. In the United States,  the pandemic was largely there were huge political splits in the pandemic. From  from the left, we had mask and vaccine, and from the right, we had a lot of do  neither one of those. And what was very interesting about some of the data that  has come out in reporting from the New York Times was that most of the worry  in the pandemic about becoming sick and stuff like that came from people who  are more politically leaning left, which makes sense, because if the side says 

you don't need to do anything, it makes sense that they wouldn't worry about it.  What was very interesting though were things like, the death rate for people in  their 20s and 30s was astoundingly low, especially if they were vaccinated, and  those populations that were much more worried about vaccination and things  still had significantly more anxiety about the disease, regardless of their age. It  would just had to deal with where they were on the political spectrum. So if they  were a believer in vaccines and masks. There was actually more anxiety in that  population. It was probably the most protected population the United States. You know, a 20 year old who is vaccinated and boosted, their odds of dying of  disorder were not very high compared to someone who's 70 years old and  unvaccinated, but they ironically, would have more anxiety with the disorder  because they were more worried about it. There were fascinating results like  that. The biggest thing that I saw was that covid was largely age dependent on  your likelihood of death and on the political spectrum. You could almost measure the level of anxiety straight across the spectrum, and it had no bearing on age. It just, it was just where they were on the spectrum, where, where the spectrum  should have gone like this. There was more anxiety as you got older. Instead, it  went like this. It was. Fascinating anyway. With covid, we also saw the Advent,  in some ways, of telehealth on just a huge scale. And they'd done tests on  telehealth, and they had proved that it was coming close, at least close to the  effectiveness of in person therapy. And there was some work by especially Dan  Siegel about how the presence of a therapist in the room, there's actually a  biochemical thing that happens when two people are in the same room where  it's almost the same as, like a heat exchange. You know, there's like a change  that happens where you both self regulate to the same level. But in the case of a really good therapist, the anxiety level of a client and the anxiety level a  therapist, the therapist can maintain a lower anxiety level, and it would  eventually just calm the level of their client. And so I'm interested to see there's  most of counseling in the US moved to telehealth during that period because it  had to, and a lot of psychiatry did as well. And so we will see long term how that  effectiveness goes. My gut is that it's it's still going to be quite effective, because you can still work through, get those aha moments, all of those things, but some  of those less measurable outcomes, like, or less, you know, common  measurable outcomes, how did your heart rate change in the presence of your  therapist? I don't know how those are going to change. I haven't seen any data  on those yet. What it has meant, though, is there's so much more access to  mental health services, especially in rural areas, because you don't have to go  where the service is. You can just be where you are. So that said, covid messed  everything up, but we got telehealth out of the deal, and we'll see how  depression levels fall coming out of the pandemic, and how anxiety rates also  fall coming out of the pandemic. Now the challenge for the church is going to be  changing, and some things, ironically, are getting easier because the pandemic 

created margin in a lot of people's lives. A lot of us slowed down because we  couldn't do as much, and that slowed pace creates room for churches to work  and act in. It's really a beautiful space. We've reclaimed this idea that we have to be able to breathe as human beings, that we need that air that we talked about  earlier in the course. So that's better. There's also, you know, anytime there's  pandemics and things like that, we have to wrestle with our own mortality, and  that that process, really, in some ways, in some ways, draws people to religious  experience in some ways, I've seen little data that it's, I mean, we also closed  churches. When you go all online, it's really hard to actually engage that  spirituality. So we will see how that goes. But the idea that people have margin  and have time, and they're not so busy running from thing to thing to thing, that  they actually have time to process and be present, that is really eye opening  news that makes the churches work much easier, in some ways, because we're  more present. The bad news is we're also more addicted than ever, which brings us to what, what is getting harder. We're more addicted than ever, and more  distracted than ever, and being part of the pandemic, looking for that outlet only  increases those things. Now that the pandemic is at a spot where things are  opening back up, and even now as I speak, there are new variants of Omicron.  So we're going to see what happens. But it’s really hard to help someone who is so distracted find peace, but it's also one of the church's great opportunities.  Anytime there's a big challenge, there's a big opportunity for the church to step  in and make a big difference, not by condemning but by finding and offering  solutions. And by finding and offering solutions like, you are a beloved Son of  God, and you don't need to run from this. You already matter. You're already  good enough. You don't need to be scared. It's okay. Other things are getting  harder too. Ever since the advent of the smartphone, anxiety rates, especially in  youth, have gone up and up and up and up and up. And I don't see that  changing. It may keep happening for quite some time, because our use doesn't  seem to be dropping, right? Last year's Facebook is this year's Instagram is next year's Tik Tok, and it just keeps rolling. There will always be a new thing. And  with that, increased anxiety rates has also gone increased suicidal ideation. So  being a young person is hard. Now it's always been hard to be a teenager, but  when I started my quiet cave in 2011 the suicidal ideation rate for teens was  between two and four, 5% maybe. And by 2017 2018 it was all the way up to  close to 10% and those rates, I haven't seen any of those rates in 2020 they  don't do those surveys quite as quite as much as would be handy, but I can't  imagine it going down. So as churches you have you have your church, you  have your your work cut out for you. The world is not a kind place in those  spaces, but you have the tools to make it better by helping people integrate who they are, by helping their come, by helping them be fully human and experience  themselves as childhood, the children of God, the people that matter, by  experiencing their own connection to God and being able to let go the 

expectations of themselves And then being able to move forward in the freedom  of being loved, that's just a beautiful picture, not just of mental health, but of life.  And that's what we need more of in the church is just life. And I think moving  forward out of this course, you have at least one or two more tools to bring life to the people around you, and you can continue to grow and develop these tools.  You can continue to work through all of these issues. But at its core, these are  really simple, spiritual problems, and the problem isn't understanding them. The  problem is helping people believe them. Because this distance is really, really far when we're talking about issues like, are you Beloved? Do you matter? Are you  good enough? But you have the tools to make that happen and make a  difference in someone, in the life of someone like me, when I started my quiet  cave in 2011 it was because I had walked through bipolar disorder from 14 to  16, and there were tools that I had wanted. I had wanted a support group that  would open up and welcome me with open arms and tell me that I mattered and  that I can make it my mom refused me to take refused to take me to a support  group because she had been to a few of them with my Uncle Ron, who also had bipolar disorder. And when did, she went around and heard everyone's story in  the room. She thought it was one of the most hopeless things she'd ever been  in. She heard from other people who had bipolar disorder, and the best case  scenario she heard in that room was a 40 year old man who lived in his parents'  basement who is on disability. And she said, that's not going to be my son. I'm  not taking him here. This isn't what his life is going to be. So when I started my  quiet cave, the idea was, what are the resources that I would have wanted for  me? I would have wanted a place where I belonged, where I could be loved,  where I could know there was hope, where someone could show me the way I  firmly believe that you can do all of those things, and that you have an intuition  on what this world needs that I don't have either. And I think you can lean into  those as well. And I think you can do beautiful and amazing things, because  God says, this is the God who is able to do far more than we ask or imagine. I  think he's going to do amazing things through you. It has been an absolute  pleasure to walk with you through this course. Thank you so much for the  opportunity, and thank you to CLI for hosting it. And. Making it all possible, I  would like to pray that you would experience the love of God in your own life in  profound and beautiful ways, that you would see yourself as loved, as good, as  worthy, as enough, and that other people would experience themselves exactly  as who they are because of the life that you live. Thank you and God, bless you.