3 weeks ago
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The President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop Daniel Okoh, has called connected national and authorities governments to fortify intelligence wellness policies, summation budgetary allocations, and integrate intelligence wellness services into superior healthcare.
Okoh made the telephone connected Friday successful Abuja portion delivering his keynote code astatine the archetypal National Mental Health Summit organised by CAN, held astatine the National Christian Centre to coincide with World Mental Health Day.
The CAN president besides challenged the long-held misconceptions wrong spiritual circles, declaring that intelligence unwellness is simply a wellness information and not a reflection of spiritual weakness.
He emphasised the church’s divine work to beryllium a sanctuary of compassion and enactment for the afflicted.
“For excessively long, discussions astir intelligence wellness person remained successful the shadows of stigma, ignorance, and fear. Many endure quietly, adjacent wrong our churches, struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, oregon affectional exhaustion.
“They are often misunderstood oregon judged, alternatively of being supported and guided toward healing,” helium said.
The summit, with the taxable “Faith and Mental Health: Break the Silence,” was attended by spiritual leaders, wellness professionals, and policymakers to forge a caller way forward.
Okoh described the lawsuit arsenic a captious effect to the increasing intelligence wellness challenges that endanger not conscionable idiosyncratic lives, but besides families, communities, and the precise cloth of Nigeria society.
He straight addressed theological concerns often raised successful Christian communities, urging a displacement successful perspective.
“As Christians, we indispensable retrieve that intelligence unwellness does not bespeak a deficiency of religion oregon spiritual weakness. It is simply a wellness information that requires empathy, care, and treatment,” helium stated.
Quoting from the Bible, Galatians 6:2, helium reminded the assemblage of the acquisition to “bear 1 another’s burdens, and truthful fulfill the instrumentality of Christ.”
“This means that the Church indispensable beryllium a spot of refuge, not rejection, for those struggling mentally oregon emotionally,” helium said.
The CAN president further called for the equipping of pastors and religion workers with cognition to recognise signs of distress and supply counselling.
He announced a caller imaginativeness for the religion to “invest successful intelligence wellness acquisition wrong our congregations, bid counselors and chaplains, and make ministries that connection intelligence enactment alongside spiritual guidance.”
Okoh besides urged schools, workplaces, and the media to play their portion successful promoting consciousness and liable portrayal of intelligence wellness issues.
Reframing the enactment of seeking assistance arsenic a virtue, the Archbishop said, “We indispensable punctual everyone that seeking assistance is not a motion of weakness but an enactment of courageousness and faith.”
He described the acme arsenic the opening of a nationalist movement, a collaborative effort betwixt the church, government, and citizens to guarantee each Nigerian tin unrecorded with dignity, bid of mind, and a sense of belonging.
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