Model project: Innovative Ways in/of Pastoral Care with People with Depressive Disorders

Begin: 1 June 2014

Project Management: Dr. Beate Jakob, Prof. Dr. Birgit Weyel; Research assistant: Annette Haußmann

With this project we want to make a contribution toward including people with psychiatric disorders in church congregations. Moreover, we aim for initiating processes of self-understanding in and of congregations that are concerned with the meaning of pastoral care in all congregational relations.

With selected congregations, we will stimulate and accompany processes of invigorating pastoral competences as well as establishing networks of congregational and psychiatric pastoral counselling. These case studies will be documented as best-practice examples. The respective methods, we draw from participatory action research and appreciative inquiry.

Two problem areas will be of particular interest: the issue of religious meaning-making of the illness (illness as a consequence of personal debt or lack in faith) and the helplessness and mental overload the volunteers feel in their dealings with people with depression.

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