How much should church leaders engage with psychology?

Olivia was 16 years old and wouldn’t go to school. It began a couple of years before when she started feeling anxious and those feelings grew until they ruled her life.

Everyone feels anxious some of the time, but Olivia struggled all the time. Her fear had a savage intensity that only subsided when she shut herself away in her room.

The most recent Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS) shows that she is not alone. One in four people between the ages of 16-24 report feeling anxious or depressed. Among the rest of the population, the survey shows that Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is now present in one adult in 12.