This Week's Program
Understanding Mental Illness
“A lot of people just don’t understand that you can be very intelligent and have a mental illness … and it was hard, because the first time you take a beloved family member to a psych ward and they lock them up, and the doors shut, and then they take their clothes off, and they go in the shower and you know, it depersonalized him … It was horrible.”
Listen - Transcript - Study Guide
Continue ReadingMy Turn
Centerpiece
by Harvey Yoder
I remember as a child being deathly afraid of people labeled as mentally ill. Based on the little information I got from others in my sheltered rural community, along with a lot of misinformation, I perceived those people as being quite unlike myself, as irrational, unpredictable, and even dangerous.
Continue ReadingThis Week's Resources
Video
- Shadow Voices: Finding Hope in Mental Illness. Check out our documentary on mental illness that features Amber and many others discussing the issues around how individuals and families find their way through dealing with a mental illness. (Amber’s story is told in the bonus content.)
Web site
- Shadow Voices. This extensive web site was developed to accompany the Shadow Voices documentary. It includes stories and quotes from the documentary, as well as many other helpful pages and links.
Related Resources
Support
Brook Lane Farm
A mental health facility located in Hagerstown, MD that was developed and sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee to provide quality mental health care to the community and beyond. Mentioned by Harvey Yoder in this episode of Shaping Families.
Mental Health Ministries
A site with a lot of resources for churches relating to mental illness.
This is a national membership organization of congregations, families, friends and persons living with mental illness and/or other disabilities.
This is an organization for Christian faith-based health and human service providers.
National Board of Certified Counselors
Find a Licensed Professional Counselor
Helping Someone with a Mental Illness: A Compassionate Guide for Family, Friends, and Caregivers – Rosalynn Carter and Susan Golant
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness – Elyn R. Saks
Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness – Pete Farley
Burton's Blog
Starry, Starry Night
By some estimates, nearly half of us will have an episode of mental distress during our lifetime that causes us to become non-functional. Yet we can’t get the same health coverage for mental distress as we can for physical distress.
Continue ReadingNext Week
Next week on Shaping Families we take you into the world of self-injury – cutting and burning oneself – a practice of an estimated two million people, mostly women. We talk to Kari, who used cutting and burning as a release from the mental anguish she experienced in her life. Get an inside look into how and why people engage in self-injury and how many find healing and a way to cope.
Favorite Family Recipes
Michelle's Chicken Casserole
Producer Melodie Davis offers this easy recipe, created for her oldest daughter who liked recipes with exact proportions when she was learning to cook.
Continue ReadingUpdates
Current Offer
The Shaping Families free offer from this week’s program is no longer available. Visit our online store at www.MennoMedia.org/store if you would like to purchase the item offered. Some items are not offered on the store.
