MENTAL HEALTH FOR ALL

Written by: Lorna Murray

Published by: TJ Books

Price: £6.00

Written by a mental health chaplain with over 20 years of practical experience in both Scotland and England, this book will be useful to anyone engaged in pastoral care and seeking to learn more about not just mental health but in caring for those bearing the burden and impact of poor mental health.

The premise of the book is simple: encouraging readers and offering them tools on how to live well – and help their communities to live well.

Building on her experience and the people and situations she has encountered, she endeavours to show how faith can encourage and guide and help communities to experience good and positive mental health. Each chapter begins with a story, followed by a reflection emphasising the importance of Christian care and also offering some practical tips.

Whilst useful for those in pastoral care, the author also hopes the book will encourage others to talk about the issues raised by each story and to use them as discussion-starters in considering what might effectively promote well-being in communities. She writes: “Be challenged to think of new – and better – ways to help the people you know and care about. Develop ideas about what would work best in your own situation. Plan what would be most effective in your own community. Then work together to make your local area into a community of well-being; a place in which everyone is enabled and encouraged to live well.”

Warm endorsement for the book – which will prove particularly timely and relevant during the Covid-19 pandemic has come from mental health charities and the Rev John Swinton, Professor in Practial Theology and Pastoral Care at the University of Aberdeen. Commending the work, he writes: ‘This is definitely a book for the times. Reading it is a blessing.”

Lynne McNeil