New program trains churches, congregants to assist with mental health needs

By Diana Lopez

Mental health is a sensitive and often stigmatized subject in many North Carolina communities that can create challenges for people who might need help but are reluctant to seek it out.

Frank Sossamon knows this firsthand from his work as a pastor of Hermon Community Church in Henderson and a grief counselor at Sossamon Funeral Home. The Oxford resident also is a former member of the state House of Representatives. 

Sossamon said he realized that the state was in a mental health crisis several years ago while he was still in office, and grasped how much of a struggle it would be to hire enough people to make a dent in the problem.

Part of the issue dates back more than two decades when North Carolina lawmakers moved to overhaul the state’s mental health system, changing it from a publicly administered care structure to one using private contractors to provide the bulk of the services. 

That caused a lot of confusion. 

“We’ve never recovered from that because people don’t know what’s available, and they don’t know where to go,” Sossamon told NC Health News in a recent interview.

That change has created questions that communities have grappled with for years.

But what if people could be reassured by trusted community members that it is OK to receive help for whatever mental health crisis or addiction they are facing? What if those people could point those in crisis to resources that could help them? What if people were given this reassurance from, let’s say, their church?

Sossamon said that since churches are already set up to provide ministry, they could also be used to become part of the solution to the shortage of mental health providers. 

With that notion in mind, he created the Faith in Mental Health program.

Public-private partnership

In 2024, when Sossamon was representing Granville and Vance counties at the legislature, he introduced House Bill 982 that would have required the state Department of Health and Human Services to create a targeted pilot program for the counties in his district that would make it easier for religious organizations to respond to the mental health crisis.

That bill, cosponsored by fellow Republican Reps. Matthew Winslow (Youngsville),  Stephen Ross (Burlington) and Ken Fontenot (Wilson)  passed the House with only one “no” vote. It stalled in the state Senate.

Nonetheless, local mental health management organization Vaya Health, along with the state Department of Health and Human Services, the Granville Vance public health department and the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health got together to launch the program.

Through the program, participants can get training and certificates that could help churches better respond to people in their congregations or communities with mental health, behavioral health or substance abuse disorders.

To accommodate different church sizes, there are three free certification levels:

• Basic: It makes churches aware of resources and providers in their local mental health community;
• Intermediate: It makes the church a hub for mental health-specific resources for the congregation and starts equipping members to assist with acute mental health needs; 
• Advanced: Makes sure that an individual’s needs and questions involving mental health, except for the provision of treatment by licensed professionals, can be responded to by members of the church. 

So far, the program has been more informal with different onboarding sessions to see which churches would be interested in the various levels. Attendees are oriented with different mental health providers, said Karl Johnson, program coordinator of the certificate program and staff member at Granville Vance Public Health. 

They have also hosted a number of community forums over the past year on different mental health topics such as anxiety, depression, substance use, addiction and youth mental health.

On Sept. 21, the program will become a bit more structured and the first official cohort of churches will start on a yearlong certification process.

Knowing where to go

Sandra Osborne, a member of the Faith in Mental Health advisory board, said she heard about the program through her pastor, who had gone to one of the orientations and started implementing some of the lessons at her church. Now, she’s helping enhance the program.

“It really is my hope that we can reach a greater number of people that have mental health or substance use issues that we can help, and that they want to come and get help, and not feel that hopelessness, and not know where to go,” said Osborne, who has lived with depression herself. 

Granville Vance Public Health reports that more than 60 churches are already participating in the program with more than 100 individuals certified. 

Brianna Lombardi, a faculty member in the Department of Family Medicine at UNC’s medical school and director of the UNC-Chapel Hill Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center, told NC Health News it is not uncommon for federally qualified health centers to have a faith-based connection or for faith-based communities to have a service arm into mental health. She’s interested in seeing how this program will progress.

“This kind of sounds like mental health first aid, but for faith communities, where that faith community or the organization has made a determination to train people in how to spot and detect and to provide support,” Lombardi said. 

“Mental health first aid is not a license, it’s not a credential, but it is kind of this really large scale kind of initiative to kind of better build awareness about mental health and train people how to talk with folks who are struggling,” she added.

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