How to Secure Grant Money for a Week-Long Mental Health Retreat

Background of the Problem and Need 

Mental health remains one of the key health issues affecting a significant number of people across the world attributed to the stressors that people encounter in their everyday work environments. Exposure to stressors creates a situation where people find it much harder as they try to cope with the emotional, psychological, and social factors affecting their mental wellbeing (Harder, Wagner, & Rash, 2016). Many of the church members exhibit signs of mental fatigue, which suggests that they may have been exposed to a wide array of factors affecting their mental wellbeing. The church provides relevant spiritual health to the local community and has been involved in other programs focused on improving the wellbeing of its members. The challenge that many of the church members experience is that they lack access to the expected professional help to enhance their capacities to deal with any underlying mental issues or challenges. Therefore, this creates the need for securing a grant that would help set up a mental health retreat focusing specifically on church members. The retreat is expected to improve the ability of church members to cope with any underlying issues or problems contributing to their exposure to mental illnesses.

The number of cases associated with mental health issues has been on a steady rise in our local community with many of the people being diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders. According to the local health facility, the harsh economic conditions are the key contributors to the rising cases of mental health issues. Local leaders agree that many people have encountered significant economic downturns affecting their employment and businesses. The community lacks adequate mental health professionals that would help in addressing these mental health issues by offering counseling and other therapies. The local health facility does not have a psychiatric department and people must travel to neighboring towns to access such services when need. Therefore, many of the church members in need of psychiatric care do not receive the same and end up facing potential problems due to mental illness. It is from this perspective that the church takes it upon itself to come up with a retreat that will accommodate the local church members. This retreat aims to create an environment where people going through mental health issues receive the treatment and support expected as a way of addressing their problems.

With the current COVID-19 health crisis, many of the church members find themselves exposed to mental health environments likely to have severe impacts on their mental wellbeing. For example, some of the church members have lost their jobs, which, in turn, impacts their livelihoods significantly considering that they cannot sustain their lives without any source of employment. Additionally, some of the church members find themselves in a situation where they are expected to work in unfavorable work environments due to the crisis the world is experience. Many of those suffering in the current pandemic do not have anyone to talk to, which contributes to their exposure to possible mental health illnesses. Organizing a mental health retreat will be of great value for the members going through stress in their different work environments. The objective is to help church members avoid possible exposure to depression and other mental health issues.

While considering the stresses that church members are going through, the church finds itself in a position where it needs to organize a week-long retreat to help create an environment where church members receive the professional help they would want. The retreat aims to promote health and wellness for the individual church members to help them overcome some of the challenges experienced in their everyday life. The retreat will include pastors from other churches, both in and out of the community, who will help offer spiritual guidance to the church members in attendance. None of the staff members at the church will be tasked with ministering during that week considering that every church member needs to receive help. The church recognizes that every staff at the church plays a key role in providing support to the church members in every way possible. Therefore, the church leadership believes that it would be important to ensure that no staff member is on duty during the retreat, which will help towards ensuring they receive the professional help to help them deal with any mental health problems they encounter.

The leadership understands that many of those involved in the church spend much of their time taking care of others and rarely have time for themselves. The role that these church members play cannot be ignored considering that they help provide the necessary support to other members. Although this is an essential part of the sacrifice that the members must make for the benefit of the community, it often has a significant toll on the members. It is from this view that the leadership believes that a retreat would play a central role towards giving these members an opportunity to take care of themselves. The idea is to ensure that the members receive the mental health care needed to enhance their capacities to take care of others. Additionally, the retreat will also help give these members an opportunity to evaluate their mental health needs with the view being that this would guarantee an overall change in the way they deal with others.

Purpose Statement 

The week-long mental health retreat for church members hopes to address some of the underlying problems and issues that many of the church members encounter in their everyday life exposing them to possible mental illnesses.

Project Goals 

The project will focus on several notable goals, which would serve as a determinant of whether it achieves its intended purpose. The first goal is that the project will seek to highlight the prevalence of mental health issues in the workplace environment while creating an environment for the discussion of how these issues are impacting church members in their respective environments. One of the key areas that the project will discuss extensively is how COVID-19 has contributed to the mental health issues occurring in workplace environments. The idea is to determine the consequences associated with life-altering events, such as the pandemic, which are likely to affect members of specific communities in different ways. The retreat will highlight how prevalent mental health is becoming in the workplace to help raise awareness.

The second goal of the project is to organize a week-long retreat for church members focusing on mental health. The retreat is expected to give church member a break from their everyday life as a way of improving their mental health wellness, especially during this time when the world is going through a health pandemic. The retreat is expected to serve as a break for many of the church members, who work for more than 40 hours every week and often have minimal time to rest and consider their wellness. The project aims to ensure that the church members take a break from their professional lives as a way of shifting focus towards promoting health and wellness. The church recognizes that many of the church members are going through stress in their professional and personal lives, which exposes them to serious risks of mental illness. The whole idea of the retreat is to create an environment where the church members would talk about the professional and personal challenges that they are going through in their everyday life.

The third goal associated with this project the establishment of a Train the Trainer model for participating churches with the focus being that the different churches would adopt similar projects to help their members. Mental health is an issue affecting the entire community and every person needs to recognize its social and economic impacts. Churches must come up with similar training programs that would be of value for their members in creating a conducive environment allowing them to talk about some of the issues or challenges they go through. The project aims at creating a model that will train persons from different churches, who will then use the knowledge gained to train other members in their churches. The Train the Trainer model is a comprehensive approach where persons are trained with the objective being to transform them into prospective trainers. Using this model, the project will achieve its long-term objective, which is to address the issue of mental health as a way of promoting health and wellness for the local community.

The fourth goal associated with this project is finding a long-term solution to some of the underlying mental health issues affecting church members. As the church engages in this retreat, it will focus much of its attention on finding a solution to some of the key mental health issues that its members are facing. It will introduce a vast array of interventions that its members may consider as part of their everyday life as a way of improving their abilities to deal with the stresses they encounter. For example, church members will be encouraged to take breaks in their professional lives to concentrate more on themselves as opposed to spending much of their time at work. The intention is to create an avenue through which members would feel a sense of connection towards themselves, which would act as a justification pushing them to improved mental health outcomes. The interventions will also help avert a situation where some of the church members often find themselves exposed to possibilities of depression and anxiety disorders.

Reference 

Harder, H. G., Wagner, S., & Rash, J. (2016).  Mental illness in the workplace: Psychological disability management . New York, NY: Routledge.