CR spoke with the Mind Café

Cornelius and Christina Browne

Around 25% of the population will suffer from a mental illness at some point in their lives, including issues ranging from depression, anxiety disorder including panic attacks, anger, schizophrenia, adjustment disorder and personality disorders.

When Christina, a consultant psychiatrist became a Christian in 1985, she desired to include her faith in the delivery of care to her patients. This inspired her to carry out postgraduate research into the relationship between mental health and religion, whilst Cornelius, a pioneer of Christian art in the UK, found his work had a therapeutic effect on individuals with mental health problems when he led art workshops.

The Mind Café, founded by husband and wife team Cornelius and Dr Christina Browne, was launched earlier this year offering a range of therapies, as a Christian response to the growing problem. Rebecca Duffett spoke with Cornelius to find out more.

Rebecca: What is the difference between the more traditional ways of helping people with mental illness and what you do with the Mind Café?

Cornelius: The main difference in what we do is that we try to bridge the gap between the church and the health services. We are very sensitive and empathetic to people of faith and we take their belief into consideration when we help them to manage their condition.

Rebecca: When we talk about mental illness and helping people, what sort of conditions are we talking about?

Cornelius: We are looking at the whole range from personality disorders, schizophrenia, people with depression and so forth.

Rebecca: Are most of the people that you work with Christians?

Cornelius: Yes, most of the people we work with are Christians.

Rebecca: How much of a problem is mental illness within the church? I imagine that it's not something people would be too eager to admit to?

Cornelius: I do agree with that; you see the point is my wife is a consultant psychiatrist, and in the course of her work she's had over 18 years experience working with the NHS and she has come across Christians in the course of her work. Whenever possible she has been able to help those who are ready to disclose their faith along with the management of their condition. In terms of how prevalent, well the statistics may not necessarily be as many people as outside the church. Irrevocably it is said that about 25% of the population would actually suffer from mental illness at one time or the other, which also includes Christians. So we are not excluded from that.

Rebecca: What sort of things does the therapy that you offer involve?

Cornelius: What we do is help people deal with their thought life. What we find is that 97% of the time what goes wrong is the way people think. We help people to manage their thoughts. If you think right you will believe right and then you also speak the right things. This is very much in line with the scriptures.

Rebecca: Do you use scriptures a lot in your work?

Cornelius: Yes we do. Our emphasis is on meditation of scriptures. We believe that Christians already have the resources that would help them to recovery. It's just a question of pointing them in the right direction. Our job is really to affirm what the pastors and leaders are already doing with their congregation.

Rebecca: Can this approach be effective for non-Christians as well?

Cornelius: It will be if they are ready to accept the methods we are teaching. It's all a question of dealing with your thought life, because it has been found out scientifically that if you think negative thoughts this produces chemicals that run around the body and actually causes stress in defence of the body. This is not only to do with mental illness, but it also affects other types of illnesses like cancer. It has been found that 87% of illnesses are actually caused by our thought life.

Rebecca: Is this as effective as other methods?

Cornelius: We use all sorts of interventions, like what we call the gym, (guard your mind), which is like taking your mind to the gym. It's a Christian cognitive approach to managing the mind. We use healing art workshops, which are therapeutic and we use Christian based anxiety and anger management to name a few.

In terms of effectiveness we have anecdotal references of people who have been on medication for a long time and by just using our methods they've actually seen themselves on their way to recovery. Yes it's been very effective.