Recently, The Economist reported that “In any given year, one person in six is afflicted by a mental illness … [yet] two-thirds of people with a mental health problem do not receive any treatment for it. In poor countries, hardly any do. And almost everywhere, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are scarce.”
After painting this bleak picture, the same authors propose a solution with promising results: Non-experts, trained in the basics of “talk therapy.” After a year of training in cognitive behavioral therapy (or CBT), lay practitioners in England and Zimbabwe reported significant improvement in their clients’ mental health, sometimes after only a few sessions. It’s a trend that many health-care experts are taking seriously.
That’s great news that, in light of a Christian worldview, has even bigger implications. And it points to the irreplaceable value of community in a culture trapped in individualism and plagued by isolation.
The skyrocketing rates of loneliness in our world correspond with high rates of mental health issues. People were created to live in relationship. Humanity’s interdependence is a feature of how we were intentionally designed by God to both create and live in community.
One of the cruel ironies of the modern world is that, having achieved previously unbelievable levels of wealth and convenience, we’ve lost so much of that vital sense of interdependence. In ways that COVID-19 only made worse, our work and friendship networks – which include churches, civil societies and volunteer organizations – have grown increasingly thin. As a result, we now outsource to professionals a role previously delegated to these irreplaceable institutions.