New super diocese receives Royal approval; The clergy ask for help with stress; Tackling stigma
New super diocese receives Royal approval
The Queen has approved a new single Anglican diocese for West Yorkshire and the Dales to replace the three existing Church of England dioceses of Bradford, Wakefield – of which the majority of Calderdale comes under, Ripon and Leeds.
The Queen met with her Privy Council last week and gave her approval to the reorganisation scheme and the formal orders for this are now being sent out.
This means the new diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales will come into existence at Easter 2014 when the three existing dioceses will be dissolved and a small number of parishes will transfer into their neighbouring dioceses of Blackburn and Sheffield.
The Archbishop of York welcomed this next step on the road to creating a new diocese and said: “On July 8 this year, The General Synod of the Church of England made the historic decision to create the new Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales: Leeds – a diocese which will bring together the diversity and life of Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield.
“Our beloved Church of England is all about Mission and Ministry – living and proclaiming the Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ in every part of our Parishes and communities. This new Diocese will give the Church the flexibility to deliver God’s message of love, justice and mercy afresh to this generation.
“As we, in God’s Own County, take on this exciting challenge, we look to our Risen and Ascended Lord, Jesus Christ, as the author and perfector of our faith, to teach and guide us as we labour in God’s Mission field in West Yorkshire and the Dales, for the salvation and well-being of all.”
The process to choose the first Bishop of West Yorkshire and the Dales has already begun and it is hoped that an announcement can be made around February with an enthronement around July.
In addition to the Bishop of Leeds, the new diocese will also be served by four area bishops of Bradford, Huddersfield, Ripon and Wakefield.
The Cathedrals of Bradford, Ripon, and Wakefield will be the cathedrals of the new diocese. There is provision for Leeds Minster to become a pro-cathedral in the future if the Bishop of Leeds so directs.
The scheme was drawn up to enhance the ability of the Church to respond to the challenges of mission in the West Yorkshire region.
The clergy ask for help with stress
Church Times – More than three-quarters of the clergy questioned in a survey about their mental health would welcome help with managing stress.
The survey of 492 clergy was conducted for St Luke’s Healthcare for the Clergy, in preparation for a conference next week on clergy stress, to be attended by representatives from every English diocese.
More than half the clergy polled (53 per cent) reported that they had received no training about stress. The 45-54 age-band appears to be the most stressful. Only 10.5 per cent said that they would decline help with stress, against the average across all ages of 22.6 per cent. Male clergy were more resistant to help than women: 24.4 per cent as opposed to 18 per cent.
The questionnaire also asked about clergy well-being. Given four options, 37.4 per cent of respondents agreed that they were “positive and energised”; 50.4 per cent said that they had “more good days than bad”; 11 per cent said that they were “struggling”; and 1.2 per cent (six people in the sample) opted for “barely coping, if I’m honest”.
Asked if they had ever considered giving up their role in the Church, 1.6 per cent said “very frequently”, 6.5 per cent said “often”, 33.3 per cent said “occasionally”, and 57.9 per cent said “rarely or never”. Again, the 45-54 age-band seemed the most vulnerable: only 44 per cent ticked “rarely or never”.
St Luke’s is promoting a combination of stress-management training and reflective practice, in which clergy take part in structured, confi- dential conversations.
www.stlukeshealthcare.org.uk
Tackling stigma
Church Times leader – WORLD Mental Health Week is seldom noted by The Sun, but this week the newspaper made an exception, a front-page headline: “1200 killed by mental patients”.
There has been debate about how this figure was arrived at, said by some to be 65 per cent higher than reality. Also, giving a total for the past ten years obscured the fact that deaths caused by those who had received or sought psychiatric care have been reducing. The Sun gives the average for the decade as 122 a year, but the provisional total for 2011 was 46. The text of the Sun article emphasises lack of mental-health provision, suggesting that perpetrators and victims alike were let down by the increasingly threadbare system. The overall effect, however, reinforces the false distinction between the sane and the homicidal, making all “mental patients” out to be dangerous to others. Had The Sun wished to point out the failings of the system in a more sympathetic and, we would argue, a more dramatic way, it might have used the figures buried inside for suicides among the mentally ill: 1333 in 2011 alone.
Definitions are, of course, significant. To kill oneself or another is seldom a sane act. The key message, however, from both The Sun and its critics is that support for those suffering from mental illness, never adequate, is increasingly overstretched. The Sun talks about “the system”, but this is shorthand for the people who work in the care system. It is they who are overstretched. Manchester University, who provided The Sun with its statistics, also published the results of a survey of 3000 GPs last month. It suggested that 8.9 per cent of doctors under 50 expected to give up direct patient care within the next five years. The figures make a useful comparison with the clergy, 492 of whom were surveyed for St Luke’s Healthcare. Here, 8.1 per cent had considered giving up their ministry in the Church “very frequently” or “often”. It is a truism that those in the caring professions are able to care for others because they share many of their vulnerabilities. Both GPs and clerics are prey to stress-related illnesses, such as depression and hypochondria. When these develop, the care they can give to others is naturally compromised.
Mental illness is too prevalent to be dealt with adequately by the medical profession. Medication has its uses, vital in some cases, but there is a need, too, for better preventative practices, a sort of mental hygiene, that could be learned by the general public, one in four of whom will be affected by a psychological disorder in their lives. Ideally, these would be a combination of meditative, pastoral, and sacramental experiences. Is it too far-fetched to see churches function as spiritual gyms, promoting mental health and fighting the stigma encouraged by sensationalist reporting?