Week Five: Heady Stuff

To read the introduction to this series, please click here.

So, this is the last week of my month-long journey of praying for five issues that I haven't really cared about in the past but should. This week it's mental health disorders and the state of those that suffer from mental health disorders around the world. The World Health Organization's fact file on mental health provided some great prompts for prayer, but what I've found myself praying over and over again is that people trained in psychology and psychiatry would find their hearts gripped with moving overseas to countries and starting mental health clinics and counseling centers, and the church in America needs to start sending them!

Here's the thing: the biggest barrier to proper care and treatment for people with mental disorders around the world is lack of human resources. In most low and middle income countries, there is only one child psychiatrist for every 1 to 4 million people. For adults, there is generally less than one psychiatrist for every 100,000 people. In Matthew 9 Jesus commands his followers to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest field of people who are lost and hurting and need all the restorative powers of the Gospel. And so that's where I've found myself this week. Praying for people to go. Praying that men and women whom God has equipped to understand the mind, would go to the far places of the world and give their lives for the sake of the Gospel.