As my life draws to an un-expected end, my legacy and desire are to leave behind a community of people that are completely well; people that can full realize their potential by coping effectively with the normal stresses of life. I would like people to be fruitful and productive regardless of the complex array of issues that exist in life that can become an obstacle in life and affect their happiness.
It is for this reason that I undertook the path to improving the mental health of my community. I love to create innovative mental health programs that I can use to integrate theology and psychology. With these programs, I usually reach communities that are suffering from mental health problems by offering awareness and counselling on issues that are affecting them. This is because I believe that families are our source of strength, warmth, and love. They are the institutions that we are first introduced to when we set our feet on this world, and they hold us up when our strength is depleted (Pennsylvania Counselling Services, 2017). When every member of the family is healthy, people stick more closely while creating positive energies that are necessary for continuity and happiness not just at family level but also at the community level and at the nation level which translates to a happy world.
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Growing up as a young child, I have learnt through my experiences and those of others around me, and I have come to agree that experience is the best teacher, but of more importance is that learning from others to correct your flaws saves a lot of damage. Within my community, I lived to see families bombarded with problems that frustrated, challenged and caused strained relationships. I saw a lot of families and mostly my teenage friends struggling with matters such as financial issues; separation and divorce; abusive parents and spouses; illnesses and grief of lost loved ones; drug addiction problems; discrimination and teenage rebellion behaviour that resulted in intense emotions in affected individuals. These emotions would range from very strong anger, resentment and hatred, irritations, distress, fear, insecurity, guilt and disappointments. The results of these were very traumatic for it resulted in depression, giving up and sometimes incidents of suicide. I lost friends, classmates and society members to suicide due to this mental effects. I saw families that dis-stabilized and fell apart as a result.
From this highly traumatized life, I came to appreciate the mental health of an individual because I realized that mental health problems affected both the functional and the working-capacity of families. An individual with mental health issues cannot focus well in any work. Whatever the cause of mental health problems in families may be, they significantly create tension in these families, frustrate relationships, lower an individual’s immune system causing damage to physical health and reduce capacities for these families to perform routine tasks thereby derailing their life progress.
These are the reasons that caused me to pursue mental health and to give my time and knowledge to counsel a distressed community. Also, at an early age, my parents ensured that I was spiritually nourished . During my spiritual encounters with God, I learnt about the blueprint of God for His children when created them, the love He has for all, His promises, forgiveness, and healing and living at peace with everyone and everything. Getting into a personal relationship with Him helped me to live a life of faith and integrate Him in everything I do and experience. It helped me to appreciate people regardless of their culture, background, race or religion. I view everyone as a God’s creation and embrace them the way God embraces His children. This has caused peace to over-flow in my life which has propelled my self- development and which has acted as a stepping stone to my destiny.
With these mental programs that I take to the community, I ensure that they embrace God’s wisdom from His Holy book because He is the sole creator of everything and hence the sole creator of solutions to the problems that face humanity . I love to impart my clients with this kind of knowledge so that they yield their problems to a greater power that is defeated by none. I work very closely with my Church pastor who assists me to build programs that are spiritual. This way, they help individuals not to relapse into depression since they get everlasting solutions to their life issues.
Usually, to administer these mental health programs, I partner with churches and organizations in my community. I work together with my friends who bear the same passion. Together with my team, I strive to create awareness to groups or an individual in their natural environment.
In the church, my role in offering mental health counselling has earned me a leadership role as a youth pastor. I work closely with them to: strengthen their faith through Bible expository; encourage them to get involve in church activities, offer solutions to financial problems by initiating programs that earn incomes and encourage them to embrace each other as a family of on Father in heaven regardless of the differences. I not only focus on the youths alone but also on the adult church as we work closely with the pastor to bring to them awareness topics that bring about mental freedom. The mental health programs for the church community covers the following topics: God’s blueprint for His creation and marriage; self-awareness and self-esteem; bullying; freedom from the chains of addiction and forgiveness and healing. On an individualized basis, the client and I usually go through a process of identifying the ailing attitude in their lives and we write them down. The next step is usually to capture their emotions by exposing the love of God to them through the word. Afterwards, I encourage them to talk to God as if He were seated in front of them and lovingly listening to what they are saying. This comes in the form of a prayer, but now it is more intimate because they have to entrust everything as if it were a physical earthly Father (Furman & Canda, 2010). This has proved to bring forgiveness and healing as negative emotions are released.
These programs have seen my church members overcoming discrimination associated with differences in culture, race and even genetic make-up and they have embraced one another as one. In turn, this has created stronger relationships in the community hence causing them to cooperate in development projects thereby achieving more and overcoming financial barriers.
Moreover, my team and I usually visit worksites especially on their wellness weeks and bring these counselling services to them. Usually, we are given specific locations like offices at the workplaces where we operate from as we offer individualised counselling to the affected workers. We also get an opportunity to offer group counselling on issues such as appreciating diversity at the work place; work life balance; communication etiquette; and work place ethics. This has had a profound impact on the performance of the organizations in my community because it has empowered great productivity ( Thyer, 2007) . The feedback from these sessions to the company has also enabled the organizations to improve their ways of working by creating a healthy environment for its staff hence improving mental health.
As for me, my years of experience in offering mental health counselling has made me to understand people more and to value the diversity that each one holds. This has, in turn, triggered a love inside me to be better and do better for my society and the world at large. For this reason, I would like to extend my mental health programs to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to bring a wind of change in the way people live by yielding to issues that can be eliminated . I intend to reach out and partner with people from other continents by training more like-minded individuals who can cause a tornado of mental healthiness all over the world. Moreover, to stay relevant in my passion, I will pursue Masters in Mental Health. This will help me understand the human issues that keep evolving better and hence give me deeper insights on how to structure counselling programs that will better improve individual and group relationships, productivity, responsibility and in effect allow the communities to reach their self-actualization status.
References
Furman, L. & Canda, E. (2010). Spiritual Diversity in Social Work Practice: The Heart of Helping (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.
Pennsylvania Counselling Services (2017). Family Based Mental Health Services: Strengthening and Maintaining The Family Unit. Retrieved on 29 th March 2017 from, http://www.northerntiercounseling.com/programs/family-based
GoodTherapy.org (2017). Family Problems . Retrieved on 29 th March 2017 from, http://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/family-problems
Thyer, B. (2010). Cultural Diversity and Social Work Practice (1st ed.). Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher.
