A resounding answer to the issue of mental illness: There is hope …

We are drawing to the close of yet another national “Mental Health Awareness Month” (the month of May), and during that time Scott Free Clinic works hard to help people raise their awareness — and understanding — of mental health and mental illness.

But among everything we try to communicate, there’s a message of overarching importance I especially want people struggling with mental health issues or mental illness to hear and believe: There is great hope!

Hope makes a difference! That’s a truth illustrated in a story that was reported in Bits & Pieces:

The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their school work during stays in the city’s hospitals. One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. “We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now,” the regular teacher said, “and I’d be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn’t fall too far behind.”

The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, “I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs.” When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much. But the next day, a nurse asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize. “No, no,” said the nurse. “You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.”

Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”

We at Scott Free Clinic want everyone dealing with mental health issues or mental illness, who may be tempted to feel like there’s no hope for their life to get better, that there really is great hope for them!

Our greatest hope comes from God, who loves us and cares about our every need. God still heals, whether miraculously or through medical, psychological, and psychiatric sciences. And there is great news in the arena of science, which is an abundance of research proves treatments for mental health issues and mental illness are highly effective in either fully overcoming issues and illness, or enabling a person to live a happy, full, and well-adjusted life with a mental illness.

With that hope, I want to encourage you to do whatever you must to get the help you need.

And for all of us, YOU can help bring such hope to people in need by helping Scott Free Clinic remove the barriers of cost and access so that we can deliver biblically-sound, clinically-excellent services that help people change their lives. You can make a donation to Scott Free Clinic today, and/or become a regular Care Partner with us, directly from our website here.

A final recommendation: If you haven’t done much to raise your awareness and deepen your understanding of mental health during Mental Health Awareness Month, let me encourage you to get a copy of my book, “Insights for Your Mental and Behavioral Health: Revised & Expanded Edition,” which you can find on our website here. We doubled the content of the book just prior to May to make it an even better resource for you.

Scotty