TOMORROW’S SUNDAY

Claire was in Boots waiting for her anxiety medication when her heart began to race.

Knowing she would keel over if she didn’t sit down, she looked for a chair, but an elderly couple were occupying the only two seats and she couldn’t ask them to move.

Suddenly, the blood drained from her face and she went white. An alert pharmacist noticed and said, ‘Are you OK?’ ‘No, I’m having a panic attack!’ She gasped.

The pharmacist knew what to do and Claire was well looked after.

Anxiety, a mental health problem, had overwhelmed her body and produced the kind of physical symptoms that look for all the world like a heart attack.

Medical people are beginning to talk less of ‘mental health’ and ‘physical health’ as though they are two separate things; there is just ‘health’ – we are whole human beings.

You see this in Psalm 6 – right in the heart of the bible. David, the poet-king who wrote Psalm 6, was depressed.

He couldn’t sleep, was obsessed with death and displaying physical symptoms of his illness. With no other help available, he wrote a song about his experience and sang it as worship to God.

That kind of faith is helpful – an anchor for your soul when things go wrong. The Royal College of Psychiatrists recognise that, alongside proper professional help, a person’s spiritual life can be part of the healing process.

John commanded the Metropolitan Police in one of London’s busiest boroughs. Then he developed a depressive illness. In his own words, ‘I used to run a borough, but for a few months I couldn’t even run a bath’. He still serves in the leadership of the Met, but the road to recovery was long. Medication and therapy played their part, but in his own words it was ‘Family, Friends and Faith’ that pulled him through.

Physical, mental and spiritual health are too closely related to separate. We are meant to be whole human beings.