Teleconference to focus on mental illness
9/14/1998 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York by United Methodist News Service Moving beyond the stereotypes of mental illness is the goal of an upcoming United Methodist satellite teleconference.
"Mental Illness…Paint a Different Picture" will air from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, Nov. 10. Originating from Nashville, Tenn., it will include a panel of in-studio participants and discussions via telephone and at downlink sites.
Cooperating organizations are United Methodist Communications; the Health and Relief Unit of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries; the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and Pathways to Promise.
The purpose is to show "the importance of seeing the person with mental illness and each family member as individuals with challenges of living with mental illness, but also with strengths and gifts that can contribute to the family and faith community," said producer Shirley Whipple Struchen, with United Methodist Communications.
"Mental illness is an issue that affects all of us in some way," said Kathy Reeves, a Board of Global Ministries executive. The teleconference, she said, will show how the church "can be more active in a positive sense."
The teleconference will review the causes of mental illness along with various types: schizophrenia and other psychotic disturbances; major depression and bipolar disorder; anxiety problems, including panic attack disorder; phobias; obsessive compulsive behavior; and post traumatic stress illness and dementia, including Alzheimer's Disease.
Other issues discussed will include managing mental illness; recognizing the fear factor; showing how stereotyping leads to discrimination; encouraging faith communities to respond to mental illness; dealing with public policy; identifying ways to change public attitudes and creating a more welcoming community.
Panel members will be Lynn Swan, Jennifer Shifrin, the Rev. James McIntire, Angie O'Malley, the Rev. Arthur Pressley and Frederick Frese. M. Garlinda Burton, a diversity trainer and editor of Interpreter, the program journal for the United Methodist Church, will serve as moderator.
Swan, a United Methodist from Cleveland, was diagnosed with manic depression in 1990. She has become an advocate for the mentally ill and is involved in church ministry for the mentally ill and their families.
Shifrin has served as executive director of Pathways to Promise in St. Louis since 1988. Before that, she was executive director of the St. Louis Alliance for the Mentally Ill. A founding member of the Religious Outreach Network of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, she has worked as a consultant with the Presbyterian and Methodist churches.
McIntire, associate pastor at First United Methodist Church of Germantown in Philadelphia, also serves as director of the Center for Spirituality and Disability there. The center encourages the inclusion of people with disabilities in congregations and encourages the development of their spiritual lives. He has experience with family members who have disabilities.
O'Malley, a United Methodist from Lexington, Ky., is founder of CROSS Ministries, a mental illness-related support group for family members, caregivers and consumers. She has a doctorate in human development and family studies at Oklahoma State University and teaches at the University of Kentucky. She has a family member diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Pressley is an associate professor of psychology and religion at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, N.J. The United Methodist pastor is a licensed psychologist, past president of the New Jersey Association of Black Psychologists and a consulting psychologist for the Board of Global Ministries.
Frese became a psychologist after being diagnosed with schizophrenia nearly 30 years ago, and he speaks frequently on mental illness. He holds faculty appointments in psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and the Northeast Ohio College of Medicine. For 15 years, he was director of psychology at Western Reserve Psychiatric Hospital, one of Ohio's largest psychiatric hospitals.
Information about downlink sites for the teleconference is available by calling (212) 870-3802 and by visiting http://www.umc.org/umcom/umtc/paint.html on the Internet.
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