1. Spirituality and the NHS
Dr Rob Waller
Dr Rasjid Skinner
Mel Meesam
Can I add my own very personal welcome to this conference. I am excited about today. There are around 300 people here today - seems small, but I am excited about where Mind and Soul - and this group - will end up in the future. God is an expert in spaces and potential, and loves to start small. Amen?
Mind and Soul has been several years in coming to this point and the 3rd October 2008 marks a key time in its journey. With the help of Premier, we are now a national organisation, with a swish new website and the potential to make some key changes in the way Spirituality and Mental Health inter-relate in the UK. It is this journey that I want to outline in this talk - from the time I was ‘forced’ to consider the concept in 2004, to when I met others who were similarly forced in 2006, to 2008 and our national launch, right through to our ten year goals [that’s 2013] of having a church that is equipped to deal with people’s mental health problems, and a health service that values the key contribution Christianity has to make to people’s mental health.
These may sound like big goals, but it was John F Kennedy who said we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, yet underestimate what we can accomplish in ten. But I am getting ahead of myself and need to take you back to when this journey started.

2. Overview Intro - Dr Rob Waller Talk 1 - Dr Rasjid Skinner
Brief Q&A on this talk
Talk 2 - Mel Meesam
Group Work
Panel Q&A
There comes a time in many people’s lives in their late twenties when they take stock of what is happening. They have [for the most part] left home - and I remember the day when my room was not my room any more but the spare room! They have done some kind of higher training - be it university or an apprentice ship - and have done a few years in that first job. But was it the right job? Or was it the job someone else chose for them, the timescale they followed to live up to others expectations and the path they had followed mainly through inertia and never really stopping for long enough to change path.
For me this was partly going into medicine, because I was good at science, and partly becoming involved in church leadership, because I was a good Christian boy. I managed to evade the medicine bit by choosing a medical specialty quite well over towards the left wing in psychiatry [although I do think there is a role for science as I will mention later]. And even within psychiatry, I found myself interested in the psychological and the spiritual and the pastoral as much as the science and the management. In my church life, I led groups at university and became an Elder in a large family church in Leeds - even though I was younger than most of the congregation! No regrets, but it was intertia and would with hindsight have preferred to be more informed.
And these two worlds never met. Sunday was ‘ministry’, Monday was ‘work’. I enjoyed both, but surely this was not the way it was meant to be. My psychiatric training also taught me this wasn’t the most health way to build a life. One head is not designed to wear two hats! My theological reading around this time also showed me that God was interested in me as a human being and not a human ‘doing’, someone who enjoyed his presence as a single being, not someone tugged in two directions. So he helped me make a choice.
Being an optimist, I saw no reason why I couldn’t chose both - someone once called this having your cake and eating it. But I found a trick - or maybe it is kinder to call it a principle - that let me chose both. I chose neither the Mind nor the Soul. I chose the word ‘And’.

3. The Audience
Who is here?
Why are you here?

4. The church AS the health service

5. The church IN the health service

6. Pastoral and Academic Approaches
“Most of us do not take [our] search seriously until we face the adversity that challenges our belief systems”
“Attention to spirituality will… support the healing process… It may lead to healing itself”

7. Single Equality Framework

8. Bad experiences

9. Good experiences of networking

10. Shared Goals - Social Capital
Definition of Social Capital: “Relationships between neighbours, colleagues and friends, even casual acquaintances, have value for the individual and for society as a whole.”
Definition of Social Capital: “Relationships between neighbours, colleagues and friends, even casual acquaintances, have value for the individual and for society as a whole.”

11. Dr Rasjid Skinner & Dr Shri Upadhyaya
Consultant Clinical Psychologists
Bradford District Care Trust

12. Social Worker Hull Mental Health Trust
Mel Meesam
Social Worker
Hull Mental Health Trust

13. Group Work In groups of 3-4, discuss: What has struck you most
A question for the Panel

14. Spirituality and the NHS
Dr Rob Waller
Dr Rasjid Skinner
Mel Meesam
Can I add my own very personal welcome to this conference. I am excited about today. There are around 300 people here today - seems small, but I am excited about where Mind and Soul - and this group - will end up in the future. God is an expert in spaces and potential, and loves to start small. Amen?
Mind and Soul has been several years in coming to this point and the 3rd October 2008 marks a key time in its journey. With the help of Premier, we are now a national organisation, with a swish new website and the potential to make some key changes in the way Spirituality and Mental Health inter-relate in the UK. It is this journey that I want to outline in this talk - from the time I was ‘forced’ to consider the concept in 2004, to when I met others who were similarly forced in 2006, to 2008 and our national launch, right through to our ten year goals [that’s 2013] of having a church that is equipped to deal with people’s mental health problems, and a health service that values the key contribution Christianity has to make to people’s mental health.
These may sound like big goals, but it was John F Kennedy who said we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, yet underestimate what we can accomplish in ten. But I am getting ahead of myself and need to take you back to when this journey started.