Photograph by Jametlene Reskp via Unsplash

Content Warning: This article discusses thoughts of suicide. If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text 988, the 24-hour suicide and crisis lifeline.

If you learned that your pastor considered or attempted suicide, what thoughts would go through your mind? Would you attend a church pastored by someone with PTSD, depression, and anxiety?

May’s Mental Health Awareness Month is behind us and now, September’s Suicide Prevention Month is upon us. We are still in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that transformed church and ministry as we knew it. Among many things that the pandemic exposed, we came to understand that clergy burnout is real and real common. Pastors are people—people who hurt, people who struggle, people with wounds, people with pasts, people who have mental health challenges—just like the people in the pews.

Would you believe me if I told you that some pastors are afraid or ashamed to admit that they’re dealing with mental health challenges of their own while struggling to define and practice self-care for themselves?

In his report, “‘How Are You ‘Being?’ Clergy Self-Care During a Time of Anxiety and Uncertainty—A Study of Mindful Self-Care Practices and Well-Being Among Clergy: Implications for the Church and Its Future Leadership,” Rev. Dr. Jerry Streets writes, “Clergy self-care is not selfishness.” The report reveals that clergy can develop chronic illnesses, depression, and other ongoing mental health conditions that are catalyzed by a “lack of institutional/denominational transparency about clergy ill physical, emotional and spiritual health” and “fear of clergy of being stigmatized should they and/or members of their family need psychological/spiritual care.”

Anecdotally, I’ve learned that many pastors haven’t been afforded a sabbatical until years, sometimes even decades into their ministries, often when they are on the brink of or in the wake of a mental health crisis, divorce, or significant loss. And when—or if—that sabbatical comes, it’s typically not enough time to adequately address wounds that ministry has created or pre-existing wounds that ministry has deepened. It seems as though pastors make headlines for successes and scandals, but what do we really know about the suffering that many clergy endure in silence? Why aren’t those stories told? If those stories were told, what would they reveal?

The first time I thought about taking my life was in middle school, long before I had any idea that God would call me to ministry. Middle school meant bullying in many forms, sexual harassment by an unknown classmate, depression spurred on by my parents’ divorce, my grandfather’s unexpected suicide, and a haunting uncertainty about my sexuality. A group of girls who I thought were my friends created an “I Hate Ryan Club,” complete with laminated membership cards. I wish I could forget this. At the time, I didn’t have the language for how I attempted to cope with a series of compounding traumas but looking back, I engaged in dissociating, masking, and other coping mechanisms in an attempt to escape my reality.

The youth group I attended while I was in middle school focused on practicing sharing our testimonies rather than discussing mental health and self-esteem. I can’t say that I felt safe enough or trusted that I could “have a breakdown” in my youth group. At a sleepaway church retreat in middle school, I remember nearly running out of a worship and preaching session so I could break down crying outside. It was my brother, rather than the youth pastors, who consoled me. During that time, there were many days I thought that the world would be better off without me and wished that I could cease living because it seemed to be the only escape from what felt like intense, unending suffering.

The church is hardly immune to stigmatizing mental health, be it directly or indirectly, and it seems as though the church is also much too comfortable overlooking the dire need for engaging in self-care. If congregations do discuss mental health and self-care, it tends to be centered on the parishioners rather than also including pastors. And what about the pastors who are enmeshed within the reality of congregational codependency? Having served as sabbatical pastor of a church for five months, I can say that it challenged some members to be without their pastor. Yet over 40% of clergy surveyed by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in fall 2023 had seriously considered leaving their congregations at least once since 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic began, and more than half had thought seriously of leaving the ministry.

In her book, Sacred Self-Care: Daily Practices for Nurturing Our Whole Selves (HarperOne, 2023) Rev. Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes defines self-care as “both a divine right and a sacred obligation” and sacred self-care as “the practices we engage in to develop and nurture ourselves as beings who are beautifully and wonderfully created by God in God’s own image and likeness.” She adds, “Just as wellness is wholistic, self-care is too. Sacred self-care, then, integrates our spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, and relational well-being.”

For clergy to be able to effectively engage in self-care and truly steward their mental health, we must have dedicated, regular time away from the church and vocational posts to do so. Walker-Barnes writes, “taking on practices that nourish and enrich our spiritual and physical selves, or self-care in the deepest sense, actually strengthens our capacity to serve God, practices that can help us in all of our seasons.”

For that dedicated, regular time away to be respected and honored, we must develop grace-filled, compassionate cultures within our churches that destigmatize mental health and emphasize self-care for both congregants and clergy. As we know but perhaps struggle to remember, Jesus engaged in self-care and tended to his mental health by routinely retreating to mountains, hills, gardens, out on the sea, to solitary and lonely places where he could just be with God, without the demands of the people or the disciples. Jesus walked. Jesus prayed. Jesus wept.

And Jesus’ congregation at large struggled with codependency too—after hearing the news of John the Baptist’s gruesome death, Jesus went “by boat to a deserted place by Himself. But when the multitudes heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities” (Matthew 14:13 NKJV). Jesus got tired of the people, and when the people couldn’t get what they wanted from Jesus, they got tired of him. Suffice to say, the tensions of mental health, self-care, ministry, and congregational codependency have existed since Jesus walked this earth!

I am a licensed minister on the path to ordination who is diagnosed with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and ADHD. My mental health challenges existed long before I accepted my call to ministry in 2019. My diagnoses do not define who I am, nor do they make me any less “fit” for ministry. When I was, quite literally, tempted to jump off a building in 2017, I remembered that when Jesus was in the wilderness, he’d been asked to jump too, to “throw himself down” from the pinnacle of the temple. I am glad Jesus declined that offer and instead chose to remain on this earth. And I am glad I declined that offer and instead chose to remain on this earth, too. But what if we hadn’t?

Navigating mental health and learning how to engage in sacred self-care are continual, intertwined journeys. My life is better because of clergy who have cared for me, prayed for me, all while preaching Sunday after Sunday, service after service, funeral after funeral, amidst the daily happenings of their own lives. My life is better because those same clergy have chosen themselves, have fought, perhaps even have had to plead, for time off when they never should have had to. My life is better because those same clergy declined offers to leave this earth. I lament for their suffering that I do not know of but know exists. We can make better worlds for this thing they call church and this vocation they call ministry. We must.