News and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians, especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry. I’m posting this week’s edition from the Amplify Conference at Wheaton College. Prayers appreciated that the presentation I’m doing with Thomas Boehm from Wheaton will inspire the pastors and church leaders to consider individuals and families impacted by disability as agents and recipients of evangelism and outreach. Depression rates among teens rose sharply ..read more

News and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians, especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry. Apologies for the delay in getting this edition out – the last couple of weeks have been a very busy time with both ministry and clinical activity. Giving kids independence as a strategy for overcoming anxiety. One theory as to why rates of anxiety are soaring in kids is that parents are too protective, and overprotectiveness results in kids who are afraid of ..read more

Disability and the Church 2023 was an unprecedented success. Key Ministry’s national disability ministry conference experienced record attendance this past Spring, reflective of the rapidly expanding growth of our ministry movement. Our 2023 conference featured seventy speakers with talks and training reflective of the breadth and depth of the disability ministry field. The growth in attendance and spike in applications from prospective speakers left us with some “good problems.” One “problem” was receiving significantly more high-quality speaker proposals than we could host with our space an ..read more

Mental Health, Medicine and Ministry is a pilot of a new product from Key Ministry. Our intent is to create a home for curated news and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians — especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church — from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry. Expect updates every Tuesday morning. Do assisted suicide laws violate the Americans with Disabilities Act? Newsweek magazine reports on two disability advocates suing the state of California over an assisted suicide law they say di ..read more

Mental Health, Medicine and Ministry is a pilot of a new product from Key Ministry. Our intent is to create a home for curated news and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians — especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church — from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry. Marijuana Use Disorder Where Recreational Use is Legal 21% of adults in the state of Washington who use marijuana met diagnostic criteria for Cannabis Use Disorder in a recently published study in the Journal of the American Medical ..read more

Mental Health, Medicine and Ministry is a pilot of a new product from Key Ministry. Our intent is to create a home for curated news and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians — especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry. Suicide rates are at their highest point since 1941 – despite all the advances in mental health care of the past 80 years. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported earlier this month that nearly 50,000 Americans died from suicide ..read more

In this talk from Disability and the Church 2023, Dr. Steve Grcevich discussed topics and trends he observes in the medical and mental health professions likely to impact the disability ministry community and shared ideas for how the individual Christians and the Church as a whole might prepare to serve the vulnerable in the months and years to come. He urges followers of our ministry to share with anyone who might be encouraged or inspired by his message. For those of you who follow our ministry, you know that I haven’t been nearly as visible as a few years ago. My work as a child and adoles ..read more

Photo by David Bartus from Pexels One of my favorite ministry-related tasks during the year is the process of selecting speakers and putting together the program for IFL, the big disability ministry conference we’ve usually hosted in the spring which will again take place on April 29th and 30th in Cleveland. The best part of the process involves coming to learn about the ministries of the speakers who are seeking to be part of our conference for the first time. Unlike most large ministry conferences, ever since our first event eleven years ago we’ve always opened the ability to be a speaker to ..read more

Our ministry team specifically and the disability ministry movement in general has raced no greater challenge in recent years than getting the attention of pastors and important church leaders. Addressing that challenge was one reason we partnered to develop an online pastors retreat with a focus on mental health last October. Two developments during this past week left me encouraged that key leaders and organizations with great influence among local pastors are starting to “get it” when it comes to the need for mental health inclusion and support in the church. The first development involved ..read more

The findings in this study from the Pew Research Foundation about evangelicals and their attitudes toward the COVID vaccine were stunning. Among religious groups, atheists are the most likely to say they would get a vaccine or already received one dose, while White evangelical Protestants are the least likely. Nine-in-ten atheists said in February that they would definitely or probably get a vaccine or had already received one. Around eight-in-ten agnostics (80%) and Catholics (77%) said the same. The share was considerably smaller among Black Protestants (64%) and especi ..read more