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 What are the connections between religion and mental health? What are religious communities doing to respond to mental illness, and what more can they do? Following the launch of our new report, Christianity and Mental Health: Theology, Activities, Potential, we have invited a range of guest bloggers to offer their perspectives.

Do you know any kids? I’ll bet you’ve not had much eye contact with them recently, because they’re glued to their devices. Ofcom reports that even 3–4–year–olds now spend almost eight and a half hours a week online, and for 12– to 15–year–olds, it’s more than twenty hours, with three–quarters of them managing time–consuming social media profiles on their smartphones. The Education Policy Institute reports that over a third of British 15–year–olds are now “extreme internet users” who spend at least six hours a day online, so the Children’s Commissioner has just launched a campaign to draw attention to the nation’s digital obesity problem.

Entirely coincidentally, of course, 1 in 10 children in London currently suffer from mental health problems. One of the ways we treat anxiety and depression is with drugs that increase your levels of serotonin, the chemical messenger in your brain that contributes to your feelings of well–being and happiness. You might have heard of the famous study about vervet monkeys. The scientists McGuire and Raleigh from UCLA found that the top–ranking monkeys in a troop had double the amount of serotonin in their blood than the next monkey down the hierarchy. If they were challenged by a junior monkey and lost their status, their serotonin levels plummeted. They only recovered if their status recovered. The researchers found that the only other way to crash serotonin was to maroon a senior monkey with only a mirror for company.

This puts me in mind of social media. Facebook is like a mega troop of vervet monkeys, giving you instant and repeated feedback about your status in your social group. If you don’t get affirmation, you suffer the same fate as the monkey with the mirror, and start feeling depressed and anxious about your status.

But what if the nation’s declining mental health could be arrested if we were Facebook for each other, real–time? If we all had our affirmation needs met by people around us, would we feel the same draw to the online world? Maybe it should be our mission to let no good act go un–noticed. Perhaps next time anyone is routinely nice to you, or wears a cheering outfit, or is kind to someone in your presence, you could do the equivalent of Liking them. Not with an electronic tick, but with a real in–person smile and some gentle praise.

And it seems that the churches may have a particular role to play in this. The recent Theos report on religion and wellbeing confirmed that there is a link between mental health and religion, particularly when that religion is exercised within a faith community. The NHS ‘5 a day’ for mental health particularly commends the opportunities for connection, service and mindfulness that the churches routinely offer. Tertullian imagined that people would say of Christians “See how they love one another!” Maybe those kids would look up if we gave them more reason to do so. 

Dr Eve Poole is a speaker and author of Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership. For more see evepoole.com | @evepoole

A version of this blog first appeared in the Church Times, 11 August 2017

Image by Lars Plougmann from Flickr available under this Creative Commons Licence