Heavy workload and high expectations bring extra stresses to young proselytizers, but the faith has programs and aids in place to help with their personal salvation.This article discusses suicide.
Beyond doling out spiritual advice and keeping companion conflicts to a minimum, these Latter-day Saint leaders must identify and address an array of modern mental health needs. “We not going to say, ‘Well, that’s diagnosed as depression with suicide ideation. So you’re going home,’” Gibbons says in an interview. “We want to focus more on what’s going to best contribute to this person’s growth.” Nathan Gibbons, a Family Services adviser to the missionary department.Every mission has an assigned mental health professional, who is on call for any emergency or ongoing support.
Since I was 16, I have been in therapy and dealt with multiple mental health challenges on and off throughout the past four years, including depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, insomnia and anorexia. When I submitted my [mission] papers, I was open and honest about all of these issues, but thought I had everything under control and would be able to handle any problems with ease should issues arise in the field.
Christena Huntsman Durham, center, listens to a speech by her brother Jon on the University of Utah campus in 2019. Durham is working to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness. That was compounded with the fact that young people coming of age during COVID-19 missed out on a lot of “normal, psychological-social development with youth groups, school activities and other high school opportunities,” Rapaport says, “and they haven’t had the same maturing experiences. You had kids who were ninth graders but acting like seventh graders.”
At the end of the two transfers, I was told that they didn’t believe that I could continue in a normal proselytizing mission, but there was a unique mission I could go to — the only full-time nonteaching mission — in the Salt Lake City Headquarters Mission. I wasn’t too fond of the idea. We had a mission president, had to have curfew, be with our companion 24/7, serving in the Family History Library, Church History Library and Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
They're washing up on the shores of 12 step groups. They have very interesting stories.
The second article in two days focusing on missionaries and their mental health. The Trib has totally lost focus. Really sad for a once great newspaper
Wait... Young adults have anxiety and depression? This never happens anywhere else. It must be the Mormon Church's fault.
Starting to think The Trib no likey the LDS Church. I wonder if it’s an unhealthy mental thing. Probably not.
Therapists usually do that. By definition.