Our church will seek to break the silence and stigma around mental illness with a Lenten series entitled Head and Heart: Understanding Mental Health

  The need is clear: Half of all adults in the United States will develop mental illness in their lifetime. Every year, nearly 42.5 million American adults — that is one in five of all Americans — suffer from some form of mental illness, everything from depression to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia. In our community alone, more than 60,000 people live with some form of mental illness.

Yet despite those alarming numbers, mental illness remains misunderstood. We don’t understand it, we do fear those who suffer from it and, as a society, we don’t talk about it.