Mental Health and Trauma Network – The Lausanne Movement

The Lausanne Movement defines holistic mission as ‘mission oriented towards the satisfaction of basic human needs, including the need of God, but also the need of food, love, housing, clothes, physical and mental health, and a sense of human dignity’.

But there is a gaping hole in the global church’s holistic response to human need: mental health. The very term often evokes responses of shame, denial, misunderstanding, judgment, or over-spiritualizing. Yet virtually every public health problem in the world has a psychosocial dimension. Poverty, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, refugees, interpersonal violence, at-risk children, and natural disasters all involve psychological suffering and often trauma, in addition to spiritual and physical distress.

Worldwide, one in five children/adolescents has a mental health problem.

Worldwide, depression is the leading cause of disability.

The Lausanne Mental Health and Trauma issue network seeks to mobilize Christian counselors and caregivers beyond strictly Western one-on-one counseling to address the world’s unprecedented suffering through innovative approaches that are biblical, holistic, systemic, indigenous, and collaborative.