“A rising tide of employee mental and emotional ill health is threatening to overwhelm employee assistance programme (EAP) providers… A combination of the cost of living crisis and the ongoing mental health fallout from the pandemic is resulting in “unprecedented” levels of mental ill health in the workplace, Wellbeing Partners has said.”
Appointments are available the next day with The Company Chaplain. We do not provide mental health treatment, and do not seek to replace the care of any health professsional, but when it comes to difficulties and distress in life, there is often an emotional and spiritual component that spiritual care specialists do address.
The following use case shows how spiritual care can assist a client whose new diagnosis has brought not only physical symptoms but fear, grief and practical worries.
Serious illness
Maia is a 46-year-old school facilities manager. A single Mom, she was recently diagnosed with Colon Cancer. After the initial shock of hearing the news, she is scheduled to begin treatment—surgery, followed by radiation and chemo.
Maia wants to talk about all that’s on her mind, without troubling her family, and doesn’t think this is a mental health issue. As she looks back over her life, she grieves the milestones she may miss in her children’s lives. She questions if her life choices contributed to her illness. She fears the costs of health care. Maia also worries about how illness and treatment will impact on her ability to get her work done and maintain her career.
During her initial appointment with a Board-certified Spiritual Care Specialist, Maia shares the story of her illness—how she began to wake up feeling more tired, and then developed weight loss and abdominal pain.
Maia speaks hesitantly at first. As her Spiritual Care Specialist listens with empathy, and without judgement, Maia gains trust and goes a little deeper, sharing about her children, the most important people in her life, and her fears for the future—hers and her family’s.
Together, Maia and the Spiritual Care Specialist begin to explore her strengths. Love and commitment to family are strong values. She has deep faith in a higher power, and has found meditation to be helpful in the past, though she hasn’t been doing it since having kids.
As Maia remembered her strengths, she recalled some words that her grandmother had shared many years ago that took on great meaning and gave her hope.
After the appointment, Maia felt a sense of relief and began to feel that she could cope with her challenges. She used her grandmother’s words as an affirmation, repeating them frequently each day. And she began to carve out time to meditate most mornings before work, to calm her mind and bring peace to her day.