Several years before my wife’s mental health crisis, we had a major family life breakdown. I had my dream job and was doing well financially. My wife and I purchased a house in my hometown. Our son started school. Family and friends were living nearby. Our marriage was doing well.  And then all of a sudden, I lost my job, and everything seemed to go downhill from there. 

My job is kind of a specialty job, not available everywhere. With no hope in sight and 50 job applications out, depression and anxiety and paranoia started to creep in to my thoughts. My wife said we needed to go to church and seek God’s hand. Was God saying something to her? We were both believers but we had neglected our relationship with God. There were so many other voices to listen to. I don’t think I would have known if God was talking, even if he was standing in front of me. I hadn’t set foot in a church in over 5 years, and certainly not since we had moved into our house. (My wife went occasionally with our son.)

As hard as it was to go through at the time, I can look back now and see God’s hand in it, even though we pretty much lost everything. That was over 35 years ago, and in hindsight, I can see this was the best thing that ever happened to us. The Bible says in Hebrews 12:11, something like this: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time but later on, when trained by it, it brings peace and righteousness.”

Personally, I believe this was the beginning of God starting to prepare us for many other problems in life we were to face, those things which would actually strengthen our faith. What I’ve learned over the years is to seek and trust God in everything. I can’t say this enough. Start a daily reading plan of the Bible! I was reminded lately, when we recently read at our Fresh Hope group meeting Forty Days of Fresh Hope, a devotional book by Samantha Karraá. Day 35 hit the message right on the head. Samantha talks about the importance of being in God’s Word daily! My only regret is not starting this discipline earlier in life.

After I lost my job, we moved out of state. I felt like I was the Bible’s definition of “exiled.” We moved away from everything familiar and got settled in a new place. But very quickly, we began having troubles with our son’s school. There was a child in his class causing problems, but the school made us out to be the problem because we were bringing it up and asking them to correct it. It got so bad, we decided to move again; being exiled once more. It was during this time, as I was looking for a new job again and we were selling our house, I had some unique dreams. 

In the Bible, there are many examples of God speaking to people in dreams. Joseph, Jacob, Samuel and David come to mind. And we hear about people in the Middle East having dreams about Jesus. But what does that look like? For me, the first dream I had woke me up suddenly, and my wife said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “I had a dream,” but could only remember that it was about Psalm 69. My wife grabbed her Bible and read it aloud, and we both started to cry: it was confronting our deep hurt with exactly what we were going through. A few weeks later, I had another dream, this time about Psalm 103, but when my wife read it, we didn’t notice anything: no emotional response. I wondered if God was talking but I wasn’t listening. In this way, God made me curious. As a result, I made a commitment to God to read the whole Bible. 

I read the whole thing in about 3 months. I’ll tell you the truth: I didn’t get a lot out of it and I think I know why. I was reading for the wrong reason. I wasn’t expecting to hear from God at all. I just wanted to get it done to say I did it (like a work). 

I started my new job, and so we moved again. This time we wanted to show God we were committed. We looked for a church home first, then a place for us to stay. Because of the problem we had experienced at the public school, we enrolled our son in a Christian elementary school. 

My new job lasted only about 5 months, and then I was told I would be getting laid-off. Seemed like more bad news. Did I have a black cloud over my head? I went home, told my wife and a few minutes later, the phone rang. My old job was hiring, back in my hometown, and wanted me to start as soon as I could – with full pay, seniority and all the benefits. We could hardly believe it! We had been praying for this even before I started the job I was currently working. Now we were returning back to where it all began.

My wife stayed until our son’s school year was finished. I moved in with my parents. When my wife and son joined me, we looked for a church with a school before we started looking for a house. We were now committed to our faith and never turned back. After we moved into our new home, my wife bought me a Bible with a Daily Read The Bible In A Year plan in it. I started using it and have been on that plan ever since. I didn’t yet know it, but God was preparing me in advance for my wife’s mental health crisis. I don’t think our marriage would have survived her breakdown if it hadn’t happened this way.

My main point is: how can we hear God if we do not recognize his voice? With so many voices out there, wouldn’t you want to know if he was saying something that could help you? His word says, “My ways are not your ways, my timing not yours.” I learned this truth by reading his word and comparing it to what was going on in my life. Sometimes it’s a prompt to pray for something. Or is it a prompt to do something, or to stay away from something that I wouldn’t normally do? Who is prompting you? The Bible says in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” God’s word is living and active; he is wanting us to listen. 

I don’t care who you are, nothing is impossible with God. I can say that I personally think very differently now, compared to when I first started reading the Bible every day. It has been for my good. Some online Bible apps will even read the Bible to you. God’s word has and is renewing how I think. Don’t ask me how, but I give all glory to God. It took the Holy Spirit to get my attention. There were times that something bad happened, like my job loss or my wife’s breakdown, but that’s not always the case. God’s word is always speaking, no matter our circumstances.

As an example, I was preparing for this blog. I already had in mind of writing something about how reading the Bible has helped me. I started to write down little things, bits and pieces of ideas that would come to mind. Then, we read the devotional about reading the Bible at our Fresh Hope group. Then my pastor for Lent started sermons on how to read the Bible. I was also reading a book Saved by Angels by Bruce Van Natta and his book began with listening to God.  All of these things came together at the same time. Coincidences? I say no! It’s happened to me too many times. God finds ways to get our attention. Over the years now, I can see many times these things happened this way; they are not coincidences. 

From listening and putting learned things into action (obeying), I received back more blessings than ever. It’s God through his Holy Spirit that enables us to have a quicker response, which has benefited me with greater peace. Struggling against God is tiresome. Some of the gifts I have received are better than I ever had before I lost my job! Especially my greatest treasure: the blood of Jesus which gives me mercy, grace and forgiveness. I have much more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control; of these I am always in need. This is walking in the Spirit. Having these gifts is like having the unobtainable high mountains in your life bulldozed down, while at the same time filling in the lows and valleys. Making life easier to go through and making a straight path to get where I’m going quicker. 

What happens to you when you’re looking at a life mountain you can’t climb or a valley so dark you can’t see anything? In Philippians 4:11-13, Paul says he learned the secret to being content whatever the circumstances. I’m telling you it’s impossible to get this contentment without responding back to God’s love. I have to wonder how many opportunities I have missed – or might miss – if I respond to God’s love by listening and obeying him.

Fresh Hope for Mental Health Tenet 7 says that our sharing helps and heals. I believe this is because we’re giving away fruit that God has produced in us. For me, 2nd Corinthians 1:4 has given purpose for the life struggles I went through; “(He) helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using the same help that we ourselves received from God.” 

Some of the hard times have passed; I feel as if they have been redeemed by God. Romans 8:28: “God works all things together for the good of those who love him…” That’s true whether we hear his voice or not. It’s just simply true because God said so. Getting closer to God has given me more peace and contentment, as I am seeking his love better in my heart. 

Who would think that losing everything and being driven away from what I wanted most could end up being the best thing that ever happened to us? If you’re struggling through something difficult, seek the Lord with all your heart. When we read the Fresh Hope Tenets, they include the verse Jeremiah 29:11. But what about the next set of verses? Verses 12-14 say, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” 

Let the word of God – in his timing – comfort you. And as you get to know him better, expect him to speak healing into your life.

Oh, by the way, Psalm 103 is now my wife’s favorite go-to Psalm for comfort.

Bob is a child of God, husband, father and an aircraft technician for over 40 years and has walked closely alongside loved ones as a caregiver. Through a series of dreams and life circumstances, God stirred in him a deep curiosity for Scripture. With the guidance of faithful people who pointed him in the right direction, Bob believes he discovered his purpose: to reveal God’s love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness to those—like himself—who don’t feel they deserve it. Bob can be contacted at: bvandyke123@gmail.com

The wealthiest nations spend more on mental health than ever before — and their young adults are doing worse than ever before. Something fundamental is missing. And a woman from Venezuela living in Argentina has found it in three words.

Norcángel did not receive her three words from a research institution. She did not get them from a clinical protocol or a government program. She found them in a Fresh Hope group — in the company of people who had walked the same road and survived it, and who were willing to say plainly what they had learned.

Those three declarations — hope, recovery, community — are not sentiments. According to the Sapien Labs Global Mind Health Report and decades of peer support research, they are measurable outcomes. And the fact that a volunteer-led, faith-based peer support ministry can deliver them, while trillion-dollar healthcare systems are struggling to, is one of the most important stories in global mental health today.

The Spending Paradox

The Sapien Labs data presents a paradox that should disturb everyone involved in mental health care: the countries that spend the most on mental health treatment have some of the worst mental health outcomes for young adults.

This is not an argument against professional mental health care. Medication, therapy, and psychiatric support are real and necessary components of recovery — as Fresh Hope’s own Recovery Principles make clear. The question the data raises is different: why is enormous spending not translating into better outcomes?

The answer, according to the Sapien Labs researchers, is that clinical systems — however well-funded — are almost entirely focused on treating symptoms once they appear. They are not designed to address the root causes of declining mind health: the erosion of spirituality, family bonds, embodied community, and whole-body wellness. You can prescribe a medication for depression. You cannot prescribe belonging.

What Money Cannot Buy

Consider what Norcángel’s three words actually represent when examined through the lens of the research.

Hope — the first word — is not a feeling that a prescription produces. It is what happens when a person in crisis encounters someone who has walked the same road and come through it. The peer support research is extensive and consistent: being in community with people who share your experience and have found a way forward generates hope in a way that clinical encounters alone cannot replicate. Fresh Hope’s own internal research found that 96% of weekly participants report increased hope. That is not a medication side effect. That is what happens when people who understand each other sit in a room together.

Recovery is possible — the second declaration — is not a clinical prognosis. It is a lived testimony. When Norcángel says recovery is possible, she is not quoting a success rate from a pharmaceutical trial. She is speaking from her own experience of bipolar disorder type 1 — one of the more challenging diagnoses in the mental health landscape — and saying: I know it from the inside. This kind of testimony has a different weight than expert opinion. Research on peer support consistently shows that it improves outcomes precisely because the source of the message is someone who has lived it.

You don’t have to walk this alone — the third declaration — names the most fundamental failure of clinical systems. You can have access to world-class psychiatric care and still feel profoundly, devastatingly alone. Loneliness and isolation are among the strongest predictors of poor mental health outcomes in the Sapien Labs data. And they are precisely what Fresh Hope addresses — not through a service delivery model, but through genuine community.

The Peer Support Evidence

Fresh Hope is not simply offering a warm alternative to clinical care. It is operating according to a model that has substantial and growing research support.

Research comparing peer support models to traditional therapy has found that peer support equals or outperforms cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for a range of mental health outcomes — including reduced hospitalization rates, increased hope, and improved daily functioning. Fresh Hope’s own outcome data aligns with this: 92.3% of weekly participants find Fresh Hope more helpful than other support groups they have attended; 87.5% consider it crucial to their recovery.

These are not small numbers. They represent people who have tried other things — clinical care, other support groups, individual therapy — and found that the combination of peer wisdom, faith community, and the Fresh Hope framework delivers something those other approaches did not.

A Prophetic Model

There is something worth naming explicitly: Fresh Hope was not designed in response to the Sapien Labs data. It was designed in response to the gospel and to the lived experience of people struggling with mental health challenges who could not find a community that held both their faith and their diagnosis with equal seriousness.

And yet, point by point, the largest global mind health study ever conducted is confirming the wisdom embedded in the Fresh Hope model. Spirituality matters. Family bonds matter. Embodied, face-to-face community matters. Peer wisdom matters. Whole-person wellbeing matters.

Principle V has always said that medicine is key — but not the whole answer. This is not anti-medicine. It is pro-wholeness. The clinical world is beginning to catch up to what Fresh Hope practitioners have been living for years: that the human being cannot be healed in pieces. We are integrated creatures — spiritual, mental, relational, physical — and our healing must be, too.

What This Means for the Church

One of the most underutilized mental health resources in the world is the local church — and particularly churches in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and other regions where faith is still deeply woven into community life.

The Sapien Labs data suggests that these communities possess, in their cultural and spiritual DNA, many of the very things that protect and restore mental health: strong family bonds, active spirituality, face-to-face community, traditions of mutual care and accompaniment. What they often lack is a framework for applying these strengths specifically to mental health — a way of welcoming the person with a diagnosis and their family without judgment, and walking alongside them with wisdom and hope.

That is precisely what Fresh Hope provides. Not as a replacement for clinical care, but as the community infrastructure that clinical care cannot supply — the weekly presence, the peer wisdom, the faith foundation, the family inclusion that together create the conditions in which recovery becomes not just possible, but likely.

Three words. No budget required. No clinical credential required. Just a person who has been through it, sitting across from a person who is in it, and speaking the truth that changed everything.

That is the model the data is pointing toward. That is the model Fresh Hope has been practicing for years. And for the communities that embrace it — the churches willing to open their doors, train their facilitators, and sit with people in their hardest moments — it may be the most important thing they do.

ABOUT FRESH HOPE

Fresh Hope is an international network of Christian peer-support groups for those living with a mental health diagnosis and their loved ones. With 250+ weekly participants across 39+ countries, Fresh Hope integrates evidence-based recovery principles with faith-centered community. Find a group near you at freshhope.us

RESEARCH REFERENCE

Sapien Labs. Global Mind Health in 2025. February 2026. sapienlabs.org

My mom, who turns 88 this summer, used to talk about holding onto things “loosely.” It took me a long time to figure out what she meant. And then, two weeks ago, I got it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for several months now, and it’s been quite a journey with the Lord. He has been reorienting my thinking – teaching me to pause and rest instead of pushing through the pain. Even though I’m wired to write To-Do Lists, checking things off is no longer as important as listening to my body, caring for it, and resting in Him in the process.

In mid-February, I met with a physician’s assistant, to discuss a procedure I’d previously tried that didn’t work. After talking it through, she suggested we try again, but in a slightly different location, and she was very confident that it would address the source of pain. So I scheduled the appointment for a Monday, several weeks out.

Two weeks ago, a light-bulb clicked on over my head, just like in the cartoons. I realized that I had placed all of my hope for pain relief into that upcoming procedure. It was going to mean the end of my pain! I was counting down the days – even the hours. But it was as if the Holy Spirit spoke quietly to my heart, “You’re putting your hope in this procedure. But your hope is meant to be in the Lord.”

Ouch. (Every pun intended.)

• “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Psalm 42:11b
• “…but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:31
• “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;” Lamentations 3:25

It was a wake-up call. I had misplaced my hope, and God gently redirected me – because He is kind. As the Holy Spirit brought those verses to mind, there was no condemnation, just a quiet nudge. And I listened.

My mom’s phrase came back to me…hold things loosely. Hold this medical procedure loosely. 

I picture it this way – my hands open and this medical treatment resting in the center of my palms. I’m not grasping it, clinging to it, or closing my fists around it. It simply rests there – where God can take it at any time.  Where I’m offering it to Him. Where I’ve surrendered it.

This does not mean that I’m giving up on relief. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I’ve become passive. I still want the procedure to work! I want to walk without pain. I want to live fully in my body.

What I am doing is holding this desire without making it my foundation. I want this deeply, but I don’t require it in order for me to be okay. I’m allowing hope to exist, but I’m no longer anchoring my soul to the outcome. I’m anchored to the Lord.

I was reminded of 2 Corinthians 4:16b: “Though outwardly, we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

This applies not only to our physical bodies and their limitations, but also to our mental health journeys, whether we are the ones struggling or the ones walking alongside someone who is.

Here are a couple of reminders from the Fresh Hope Recovery Principles that we read at each meeting (find a group here):

Tenet I: 

All of Us read: … We remind each other of the Lord’s love, and that He alone can do all things. He is the source of our hope, and in Him we can overcome all things. 

Tenet IV: 

Those with a diagnosis read: My disorder can lead me to feel hopeless. Therefore, I choose to believe, regardless of my feelings, that there is help and hope for my physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being. 

All of Us read: Together we remind each other that our hope and joy come from the Lord. He alone is able to fulfill our needs in every aspect of our lives. 

Living open-handed with a mental health diagnosis is not easy. The pain, the chaos, the negative thinking, the unfairness – it can be all-consuming. But when we rely on the Holy Spirit’s strength instead of our own, we can begin to release it to God. We can trust His timing and His outcomes. He will take all of the difficult things we are going through, or have gone through, or will go though, and weave them into something that brings Him glory and works for our good (see Romans 8:28).

I am learning to live open-handed – with my pain, my hope, and my life – releasing my grip and trusting God to hold what I cannot control.

Peggy has been involved with Fresh Hope as a Group Facilitator for over 8 years and as the Hope Coach Trainer for over 6 years. She can be reached at peggy@freshhope.us.

The gut-brain connection is no longer just a wellness trend — it is a measurable contributor to the global mental health crisis. And what we eat is something we can actually do something about.

Sergio’s recovery did not happen all at once. It happened in layers — each one requiring him to look at a different dimension of his life and ask: what here needs to change? Medication was part of it. Community was part of it. Faith was part of it. And slowly, he began to understand that caring for his whole self — including his body — was not vanity or self-indulgence. It was stewardship.

The Sapien Labs Global Mind Health Report identifies ultra-processed food consumption as one of the four root causes of declining young adult mind health. This finding surprised many people who read the report — including mental health professionals who had not been tracking the nutritional research. But for those familiar with the growing science of the gut-brain connection, it was a confirmation of what the data had been quietly building toward for years.

What the Research Found

The Sapien Labs researchers found that across all 85 countries studied, higher consumption of ultra-processed foods — items manufactured with industrial ingredients, additives, and preservatives largely absent from traditional diets — was consistently associated with worse mind health outcomes in young adults.

The mechanism behind this connection is increasingly well understood. The human gut contains roughly 100 million neurons and produces approximately 95% of the body’s serotonin — the neurotransmitter most commonly targeted by antidepressant medications. The gut and the brain communicate constantly through the vagus nerve, in what researchers call the gut-brain axis.

When we eat food that nourishes the gut microbiome — the trillions of bacteria that live in our digestive system — we support the production of serotonin, dopamine, and other neurochemicals essential for emotional stability. When we eat food that disrupts the microbiome — through artificial additives, preservatives, excess sugar, and industrial seed oils — we undermine the very biological foundation of mental wellbeing.

In short: what we put into our bodies is not separate from what happens in our minds. They are part of the same system.

A Spiritual Perspective on the Body

For Christians, this connection between physical and mental health is not new theology — it is a recovery of something the church has sometimes lost. Scripture speaks consistently of the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, as something worthy of care and dignity. The Luke 2:52 framework that shapes the Fresh Hope approach describes Jesus growing in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and people — a holistic picture of flourishing that includes the physical dimension.

The Sapien Labs finding on food is a scientific confirmation of a theological reality: we are not disembodied souls. We are whole persons — spiritual, mental, relational, and physical — and what we do with our bodies has consequences for our minds and spirits. Neglecting the physical dimension of health is not humility. It is an incomplete stewardship of the self God made.

This verse, embedded in Recovery Principle V, is often read in purely cognitive terms — as being about thought patterns and mindset. But its context is broader: the transformation of the whole person. Taking every thought captive requires a brain that is capable of the work. And the brain is biological. It runs on what we feed it.

The Traditional Diet Advantage

One of the most striking aspects of the Sapien Labs food data is the regional dimension. The countries that score highest for young adult mind health — in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America — are also countries where traditional, whole-food diets remain more prevalent. The countries that score lowest are those where ultra-processed food has most thoroughly displaced traditional eating patterns.

Notice that the traditional diet column is not just about ingredients. It is about the culture of eating — the practice of preparing food with care, sharing it with family, and receiving it as a gift. The gut-brain connection is also a family-table connection. The very act of shared meals — which the smartphone data in Blog 4 identified as something screens are eroding — is part of how food protects mental health.

Latin American cuisine, with its emphasis on fresh ingredients, legumes, fermented foods like curtido and chicha, and the cultural centrality of the family meal, is not just a food tradition. According to the emerging science, it is a mental health practice.

Recovery Is Whole-Person Work

One of the most important things Fresh Hope teaches is that recovery is not a single-track process. It is not only medication. It is not only therapy. It is not only prayer. It is the patient, intentional cultivation of every dimension of wellbeing — spiritual, mental, relational, and physical.

Principle V invites something that is countercultural in both clinical and church settings: honest self-examination of how we are living. Not self-condemnation. Not perfectionism. But a willingness to look at our patterns — including what we eat — and ask whether they are serving our wellbeing or undermining it.

For Sergio, this kind of examination was part of his journey. Learning to take his treatment without shame was one layer. Learning to ask for support was another. And alongside those things, learning to care for his body — to see physical stewardship not as vanity but as faithfulness — became part of what it meant to choose life over suffering.

Practical Wisdom for the Journey

This blog is not a diet plan. It is not a prescription for what to eat or a list of foods to avoid. The goal is not to add another source of guilt to people who are already carrying a great deal. The goal is to broaden the frame — to help people living with mental health challenges, and those who love them, understand that the body is part of the recovery conversation.

Some simple starting points that align with both the research and the Fresh Hope wholeness framework:

Prioritize whole foods when possible. Traditional diets rich in vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and minimally processed proteins support the gut-brain axis in ways that ultra-processed foods do not.

Reclaim the shared meal. Eating together — without devices, with conversation and presence — is not just a nice tradition. It combines the nutritional, relational, and spiritual dimensions of wellbeing in a single practice.

Reduce sugar and ultra-processed snacks gradually. Not through shame or rigid restriction, but through informed, compassionate choices. Small changes compound over time.

Talk to your treatment team. Nutrition is increasingly part of integrative mental health care. If your provider is not discussing it, you are welcome to bring it up.

And above all: approach your body with the same grace and patience you would offer a dear friend. Recovery is not a performance. It is a direction. Every small step forward counts — and Sergio would be the first to tell you so.

ABOUT FRESH HOPE

Fresh Hope is an international network of Christian peer-support groups for those living with a mental health diagnosis and their loved ones. With 250+ weekly participants across 39+ countries, Fresh Hope integrates evidence-based recovery principles with faith-centered community. Find a group near you at freshhope.us

RESEARCH REFERENCE

Sapien Labs. Global Mind Health in 2025. February 2026. sapienlabs.org

I could talk about my medications for days. It was one of the first slaps in the face that accompanied my diagnosis, and it was a big one. Being expected to navigate a litany of psychiatric medications seemed like a joke. I wasn’t a doctor. I was simply an ill person fighting to make it through my day. Everything was a mess: side effects galore, landing on the right medication in the midst of seemingly twenty different problems, the frustration of not sleeping enough vs sleeping too much, endless blood work to be done, and constantly trying to figure out the dosages of nine medications that wouldn’t stay put. As quoted in my book: “I felt like my meds bullied me.”

Over time, amazingly, my resolve turned my bully into one of my closest friends. Thankfully, my childlike frustrations gave way to maturity as I partnered with my doctor to overcome my illness, one medication at a time.

I am purely blessed by God to be where I stand today in relation to my medications. There are few people who ever reach this level of maturity. It’s the nature of bipolar disorder. The enemy deceives us at our weakest point.

I remember being there myself, for fifteen years. Garbage piled into my brain as I was convinced that I would lose everything if I took any medications. At that point, my creativity blew people’s socks off. I was deemed a genius when I was in school. I had so much energy. I felt superhuman. I knew that medications would suppress all of that. I didn’t want to take them. For fifteen years, I fought the medication battle. Every day when I woke up, I debated taking them. However, it was in 2019 that God came into my life and that is when He started to teach me spiritual obedience.

You must understand that a system was established in my life since the time that I was diagnosed. Its foundation is my doctor and medication regimen. I remember that my mother taught me to take my medications at all costs, regardless of whether I wanted them or not. I was learning obedience.

Everything worth having in life has a cost. It reminds me of all that I gave up in seeking God for the first time. After meeting God, my next priority was gaining a sound mind. I learned that it takes surrender to God to find true healing. In gaining a sound mind, I made a choice to take my medications faithfully, and it came with a cost: giving up my mania, my big dreams,  an obscene amount of creativity and everything that made me feel important. But what mattered was that I was learning how to push back on the enemy.

I will always remember one of my appointments with my doctor when he said to me, “See? Your personality is starting to come out.” He was only able to point that out after we had worked hard for nine years to perfect the medications that I took. People with bipolar disorder believe a lie that medications take away their personality. Mania isn’t their personality. It’s their illness. I am much more subdued at this point in my life and there are many things that I have lost in taking my meds, not to mention how sedated I feel all day long, every day. But, through this spiritual maturity of submitting to the system, God uses it for good.

I would urge you to do the same. I promise that you will certainly find so many treasures from God inside of this leap of faith.

Sincerely, Ruby

Please check out my website: iwillflyrubylucas.com

The world’s largest mind health study has found a disturbing link between early smartphone use and declining mental wellbeing. The antidote isn’t an app — it’s real human presence.

Gabriela is 31 years old. She is a business administrator, a daughter of God, and a brand-new mother — her baby was just six months old when she recorded her testimony. She is also a woman who, at some point before finding Fresh Hope, genuinely believed there was no way out.

Her generation — adults between 18 and 34 — is the most mentally distressed generation in recorded history, according to the Sapien Labs Global Mind Health Report. And the research is increasingly clear about one of the central reasons why.

The Smartphone Finding

Among the four root causes the Sapien Labs researchers identified for the decline in young adult mind health, the smartphone data is perhaps the most urgent — and the most actionable.

The study found a consistent, measurable relationship between the age at which a person first owned a smartphone and their mental health outcomes as an adult. The earlier the ownership, the worse the outcomes — across every country studied, across every income level, across every demographic group.

The researchers are careful not to claim that smartphones cause mental illness in a simple, direct sense. The relationship is more complex. What smartphones do — particularly social media — is systematically replace the activities and relationships that protect mind health with activities that erode it.

Instead of in-person conversation, we get curated performance. Instead of family mealtimes, we get parallel scrolling. Instead of boredom that allows the mind to rest and create, we get infinite stimulation that trains the brain to crave novelty and tolerate discomfort less and less. Instead of the deep, embodied presence of another human being, we get a screen.

The Generation That Was Never Bored

There is something important that researchers are beginning to understand about the particular damage done by giving children smartphones before their brains are fully developed. The adolescent brain is in a critical period of formation. It is learning how to manage emotion, how to tolerate frustration, how to build identity, how to navigate conflict.

These capacities are built through experience — through the friction of real relationships, the awkwardness of face-to-face interaction, the slow development of patience and self-regulation. When a child has a device in their hand that delivers instant dopamine on demand, those developmental processes are disrupted.

None of this means that every young adult with a smartphone is destined for mental illness. But it does mean that the generation now in their 20s and early 30s — Gabriela’s generation — grew up in an environment that was systematically less protective of their minds than the one their parents experienced.

They are not weaker than previous generations. They were handed tools that damaged them before they had the capacity to use them wisely. And many of them are now carrying the consequences.

The Hidden Anxiety

What Gabriela describes in her testimony is textbook anxiety in the digital age: a sense that there is no solution, that the situation is inescapable, that something is fundamentally broken — even when the external circumstances of life look manageable. This is the anxiety that hides behind a functioning life, the kind that Sergio in Blog 1 described as smiling on the outside while feeling empty on the inside.

The Sapien Labs data links this pattern directly to high social media engagement. The constant comparison, the algorithmic amplification of outrage and fear, the performance of a curated life — these are not neutral activities. They are systematically training young adult minds to feel insufficient, unsafe, and alone, even in the midst of digital connection.

Notice what changed for Gabriela: not her diagnosis. Not her external circumstances. What changed was that she found a community — real, embodied, present people who prayed for her, interceded for her, and walked alongside her. The thing that broke through the anxiety was not digital. It was human.

Presence as Medicine

This is where the Sapien Labs research and the Fresh Hope model converge in a particularly striking way. The researchers found that the decline in mental health among young adults is not primarily about what is happening to them externally. It is about what is being lost — specifically, the quality of human connection that screens cannot replicate.

Fresh Hope groups meet in person. They gather weekly. They are facilitated by people who have walked the same road — who understand not just intellectually, but from the inside, what it means to live with a mental health challenge. They pray together, share stories, hold one another accountable, and celebrate each other’s victories.

In a world where an entire generation has been trained to process life through a screen, this kind of presence is countercultural. It is also, according to the data, exactly what struggling minds need most.

Principle V does not call people away from treatment. It calls them toward wholeness — a recognition that healing involves more than biochemistry. It involves how we think, how we relate, what communities we invest in, and what habits we form. In the smartphone era, this principle has never been more relevant.

A Word to Parents

The Sapien Labs findings have significant implications for parents — particularly parents in Latin America, where smartphone adoption has accelerated rapidly in the past decade and where children are receiving devices at increasingly young ages.

The data suggests that every year a child’s first smartphone is delayed is a gift to their developing mind. This is not about fear or restriction for its own sake. It is about protecting the developmental window during which children build the capacities — emotional, relational, attentional — that will serve them for the rest of their lives.

Family mealtimes without devices. Conversations that last longer than a notification. Boredom that is allowed to resolve itself into creativity rather than being immediately filled by a screen. These are not old-fashioned inconveniences. According to the largest mind health study ever conducted, they are among the most protective things a family can do.

A Word to Young Adults

If you are in Gabriela’s generation — if you grew up with a device in your hand before you had the tools to use it wisely — we want to say this clearly: what you are experiencing is not a personal failure. It is the predictable result of an unprecedented experiment in which an entire generation was the test subject.

And there is a way through. Not by deleting every app and living off the grid. But by intentionally rebuilding what screens have been eroding: in-person community, honest conversation, the slow and unglamorous work of showing up week after week for a group of real people who know your real name and your real story.

That is the testimony of someone who found the antidote. Not an algorithm. Not a mental health app. Sisters. Prayer. Tools for the journey. A community that showed up in person, week after week, and refused to let her face it alone.

The research calls this “high-quality social connection.” Gabriela calls it Fresh Hope. And she would tell you — they are the same thing.

ABOUT FRESH HOPE

Fresh Hope is an international network of Christian peer-support groups for those living with a mental health diagnosis and their loved ones. With 250+ weekly participants across 39+ countries, Fresh Hope integrates evidence-based recovery principles with faith-centered community. Find a group near you at freshhope.us

RESEARCH REFERENCE

Sapien Labs. Global Mind Health in 2025. February

When I first heard about Noelia, I thought about reaching out to her.

I don’t know exactly what I would have said. Maybe I would have told her that I also live with a mental health diagnosis. That I know what it feels like when the pain doesn’t seem to have a bottom. That I have sat across from people carrying the kind of weight she carried, and I have watched hope become possible again — not because the circumstances magically changed, but because they finally had someone who truly understood walking beside them. Someone who could point them, step by step, back to the only source of hope that never runs out.

I thought about reaching out. And then I saw the date. It was already too late.

On March 26, 2026, a 25-year-old young woman named Noelia Castillo Ramos died by euthanasia in Spain. She is now the youngest person in that country’s history to have received assisted death. Her life was marked by trauma, physical suffering, and years of deep emotional pain. She fought hard. But she fought largely alone.

I can’t stop thinking about her mother — who said goodbye, walked out of that room, and had to keep breathing. I can’t stop thinking about her father — who fought through five courts across two countries trying to save his daughter, and couldn’t. Whatever you think about the legal decisions, that is a grief no parent should carry.

And I think about Noelia. Twenty-five years old. So much pain. So much aloneness.

This broke my heart. And it filled me with urgency.

Suffering in Silence Is Not Inevitable

Noelia’s story is not unique. Right now, in every country — in your country — there are people carrying this level of pain in silence. People with mental health diagnoses who feel like a burden. Family members who don’t know how to help and feel completely alone in that too. People who go through the motions every day while something inside them is slowly breaking.

Many of them don’t know that help exists. Many of them don’t know that someone who has walked a similar road is willing to walk alongside them — trained, present, and free of charge. Many of them have never been told that their pain is not the end of their story. That there is a God who sees them, who has not abandoned them, and whose hope is real enough to hold onto even on the darkest days.

The book of Psalms is full of people who felt exactly what Noelia felt — crushed, forgotten, out of options. And yet, again and again, they found their way back to this: “My hope comes from the Lord.” (Psalm 62:5)

That is the foundation everything else is built on.

There Is a Place for You

Fresh Hope is a peer-led, faith-based mental health support ministry. People from over 39 countries attend our groups. Every week, hundreds of people with mental health challenges and their families gather in Fresh Hope groups — spaces where trained peers walk alongside those who are suffering, not to fix them, but to witness their lives, validate their pain, and point them toward the God who heals.

We don’t glorify Fresh Hope. We glorify the One who makes hope possible. Fresh Hope is simply a vessel — a community of people who have found that hope in Jesus Christ and refuse to keep it to themselves. And you don’t have to be a believer to join our groups. The only prerequisite is a desire for hope in your life.

If you are living with a mental health diagnosis: you do not have to struggle alone. Our groups are free. Our Hope Coaches are free. They are people who understand from the inside — because they have been there too. And they have found something worth holding onto. Reach out. There is a place for you in this community.

If you love someone with a mental health diagnosis: your pain is real too. Watching someone you love suffer and not knowing how to help is its own kind of exhaustion. You don’t have to carry that alone either. Fresh Hope has a place for you.

I found Fresh Hope — or better said, Fresh Hope found me — at a moment in my own life when I needed it deeply. It changed everything. Not because someone fixed me, but because someone showed up, week after week, and kept pointing me back to Jesus. Back to truth. Back to hope that is alive.

That is what we do. And we need more people willing to do it.

To Those Already Serving: Keep Going

To every Hope Coach, every group facilitator, every volunteer who shows up week after week — please hear this:

You are making a difference in lives you may never fully see. There is someone in your group right now whose story will not end in despair — because you showed up. Because you stayed. Because you chose to be the hands and feet of Jesus in one of the loneliest places a person can find themselves.

We didn’t make it to Noelia in time. That breaks my heart. But because of you, there are people whose names we will never know who are still here — still hoping — because someone like you chose to answer the call.

Don’t stop. What you are doing matters for eternity.

The Clock Is Running — Get Involved

Every week that a community goes without a Fresh Hope group is a week when someone like Noelia has nowhere to turn.

Starting a Fresh Hope group does not require you to be a therapist. It requires lived experience with mental health challenges — your own or a loved one’s — a heart for people who are suffering, and a willingness to be trained and show up.

Become a Hope Coach — our next training is on April 25th. Hope Coaches offer one-on-one peer support, walking alongside individuals who are struggling and pointing them toward lasting hope.

Become a Group Facilitator — training is happening Thursday nights throughout April. Facilitators lead weekly Fresh Hope groups in their communities.

The world does not need more people watching from the sidelines. It needs more people willing to step into the gap — to carry the hope they have found in Christ into the darkest corners of their communities.

Our hope comes from the Lord. And that hope is meant to be shared.

The world needs Fresh Hope. Not someday. Now.

Will you answer the call?

Our groups and Hope Coaches are available at no cost. To find a group, connect with a Hope Coach, or register for facilitator or Hope Coach training, visit freshhope.us or write to us at info@freshhope.us

— Samantha Karraa International Ops Director, Fresh Hope International

Global research now confirms that family bonds are one of the most powerful forces protecting mental health. Fresh Hope has always known this — and built its model around it.

Two mothers. Two countries. Both carrying a weight that millions of families around the world share in silence — the weight of loving someone whose mind is struggling, and not knowing how to help without losing yourself in the process.

Until recently, most mental health support models focused exclusively on the person with the diagnosis. The loved ones — the parents, spouses, siblings, children — were left on the outside, expected to cope on their own, often with no community and no framework for understanding what they were living through.

Fresh Hope was built differently. And now, the largest global study of mind health ever conducted is explaining precisely why that difference matters.

What the Research Found

The Sapien Labs Global Mind Health Report identified strong family bonds as one of the four primary protective factors for mental wellbeing in young adults. The data is stark:

The researchers were careful to note that this is not simply about living with family members. It is about the quality of the bond — the sense of being known, supported, and not alone. A household can have five people in it and still leave everyone feeling isolated. What the data measures is genuine, emotionally present connection.

Significantly, the decline in these bonds tracks directly with the rise of screen-based interaction and the erosion of shared mealtimes, family conversation, and in-person community. Families are physically present but emotionally absent in ways that previous generations rarely experienced.

The Unique Design of Fresh Hope

Most peer support models for mental health serve one population: the person with the diagnosis. This makes sense as a starting point. But it misses something fundamental about how mental illness actually works in families.

When someone receives a diagnosis, the entire family system is affected. Parents grieve. Spouses are frightened. Children are confused. Siblings feel overlooked. And the person with the diagnosis often carries not only their own suffering, but the guilt of watching their loved ones struggle alongside them.

Fresh Hope was designed to address this reality directly. Its groups include both the person with the diagnosis and their loved ones — sitting in the same room, hearing each other’s perspectives, learning together, and building a shared language of hope and recovery.

This principle does something most mental health resources do not: it speaks directly to both people in the relationship simultaneously. The person with the diagnosis is invited to consider the impact of their struggle on those they love. The loved one is invited to take responsibility for their own patterns of response. Neither is cast as victim or villain. Both are invited into growth.

A Mother’s Long Wait — and Its Answer

Marta has been praying for her daughter for years. Not passive, resigned prayer, but the active, persistent intercession of a mother who refuses to stop believing that healing is possible.

What strikes us about Marta’s testimony is the combination of active faith and practical action. She is not simply waiting for a miracle. She is choosing to walk a path. She is doing what is within her reach. She is accompanying her daughter — not fixing her, not controlling her, but walking alongside her.

This is exactly what the Sapien Labs data describes as protective: not the mere presence of family, but the quality of accompaniment. Being present. Being consistent. Refusing to give up. These are the things that shift the trajectory of mind health.

When You Don’t Know How to Help

Beatriz’s testimony carries something that many caregivers will recognize immediately: the double weight of grief and self-doubt.

Notice what Beatriz does in those two sentences. First, she names her own internal struggle — the false belief that her son’s illness was somehow a reflection of her faith. Then she turns outward immediately: there is hope, recovery is possible, and you do not have to walk this alone.

This is the movement that Fresh Hope produces in caregivers. It begins with honest acknowledgment of how hard it is. It ends with the offer of companionship — not advice, not a program, but presence. The research calls this “social support quality.” Beatriz calls it walking together.

Latin America’s Hidden Strength

One of the most encouraging findings in the Sapien Labs report is the consistently high performance of Latin American nations in the young adult mind health rankings. This is not despite their economic circumstances. It is, in significant part, because of their cultural ones.

The familism that is so characteristic of Latin American culture — the deep sense of mutual obligation, the priority of family relationships, the willingness to sacrifice individual convenience for family wellbeing — is not a developmental lag to be overcome. According to the data, it is a mental health resource that wealthier, more individualistic societies are desperately trying to recover.

Fresh Hope Español serves communities across 39+ countries, with a particular presence in Latin America. When we bring families together in our groups, we are not introducing a foreign concept. We are strengthening something that is already in the cultural DNA of these communities — and the research is confirming that this strengthening has a measurable, protective effect on human minds.

For the Family Member Reading This

If you are a parent, spouse, sibling, or child of someone with a mental health diagnosis, we want to say something directly to you:

Your struggle is real. The exhaustion, the fear, the grief, the confusion — all of it is valid. You did not cause this, and you cannot cure it. But you also are not helpless.

The research tells us that your presence — your genuine, consistent, emotionally engaged presence — is one of the most powerful forces available to the person you love. Not your perfect responses. Not your flawless understanding of their diagnosis. Just you, showing up, refusing to walk away, learning as you go.

Marta’s last three words carry a quiet confidence that no data table can produce: “And it is so.” Not wishful thinking. Not denial. The settled testimony of a woman who has walked the long road of accompanying her daughter, and who has found that God was faithful in it.

That is what Fresh Hope offers to families: not a guarantee of cure, but a community of people who are walking the same road, a framework for doing it with wisdom and care, and the shared conviction that hope is not naive — it is the most realistic response to what God has promised.

ABOUT FRESH HOPE

Fresh Hope is an international network of Christian peer-support groups for those living with a mental health diagnosis and their loved ones. With 250+ weekly participants across 39+ countries, Fresh Hope integrates evidence-based recovery principles with faith-centered community. Find a group near you at freshhope.us

RESEARCH REFERENCE

Sapien Labs. Global Mind Health in 2025. February 2026. sapienlabs.org

New global research confirms what faith communities have always known: a living connection to God is not a spiritual luxury — it is one of the strongest predictors of mental wellbeing on earth.

Two voices. Two countries. Two diagnoses. One shared conviction: faith was not incidental to their recovery — it was central to it.

And now, for the first time, a global research study measuring the minds of more than 2.5 million people across 85 countries is saying the same thing in data.

What the Research Found

The Sapien Labs Global Mind Health Report identified four root causes behind the decline in young adult mental wellbeing over the past two decades. Spirituality is one of them — and the data around it is striking.

To be clear about what the researchers mean by spirituality: it is not church attendance or religious affiliation. It is the personal, internal sense of connection to something greater than oneself — to God, to meaning, to transcendent purpose. It is the lived experience of not being alone in the universe.

For those of us rooted in Christian faith, this is not surprising. Scripture has always pointed to this reality. What is remarkable is that a secular research institution, drawing on the largest dataset of its kind, is now measuring it and confirming it with numbers.

The Faith-and-Diagnosis Divide

One of the most painful things that happens in Christian communities around the world is the unspoken message that mental illness is a sign of weak faith. If you just prayed more, trusted more, believed more — you would be well.

This message, however well-intentioned, causes enormous damage. It isolates people at the moment they most need community. It adds the weight of spiritual shame to what is already a heavy burden. And it is simply not true.

Natalia’s experience is not unique. Across Fresh Hope groups in 39+ countries, the same story surfaces again and again: people who have been suffering in silence, afraid that their diagnosis is evidence of spiritual failure. People who have been praying faithfully while quietly falling apart, convinced that asking for help would mean admitting that their faith was not enough.

The Sapien Labs research does not address theology — but its findings have a profound theological implication. The data shows that spirituality protects mental health. It does not cure every condition, and it was never promised to. But a living, personal faith is one of the most powerful buffers the human mind has against the storms of mental illness.

What this means is not that diagnosis equals spiritual failure. It means the opposite: that tending to your spiritual life — prayer, community, Scripture, honest relationship with God — is an act of caring for your mind, not a replacement for professional treatment.

What Fresh Hope Teaches

Fresh Hope’s Recovery Principles have always held both of these truths together. Principle V states directly that while medicine is a key component in recovery, it is not the only answer. People are encouraged to explore new ways of thinking, to take responsibility for their whole-person wellbeing, and to choose freedom over suffering through self-knowledge in action.

This is not either/or thinking. It is and/both. Medication and faith. Treatment and community. Clinical support and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

This is the theology of Fresh Hope in lived form: a diagnosis is not a spiritual verdict. It is a condition. And conditions can be managed, treated, and walked through with hope — because the God who made the human mind has not abandoned the people whose minds are struggling.

The Numbers the World Cannot Explain

There is something remarkable about the geographic distribution of the Sapien Labs spirituality findings. The regions of the world with the highest young adult mind health scores — Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Latin America — are also the regions with the highest reported spirituality. The regions with the lowest scores — Western Europe, the English-speaking world, East Asia — are the regions where spirituality has declined the most rapidly over the past generation.

This is not coincidence. And it is not a simple correlation. The researchers controlled for income, education, and access to healthcare. Even after those variables are accounted for, spirituality remains one of the strongest independent predictors of mental flourishing.

The world’s wealthiest countries, with the most sophisticated mental health systems, the most advanced treatments, and the most readily available therapy — are losing the mental health battle among their young adults. Meanwhile, communities that maintain deep spiritual rootedness are doing something that no clinical protocol has yet been able to replicate.

Fresh Hope, from its very beginning, was built on this foundation. Not as a spiritual substitute for professional care, but as the recognition that human beings are not just biological organisms. We are spiritual beings, made by God, designed for relationship with Him — and when that relationship is alive and active, something in us flourishes that nothing else can produce.

A Word to Anyone Carrying Spiritual Shame

If you have ever been told — directly or indirectly — that your mental health struggle means your faith is weak, we want to speak directly to that lie.

You are not broken. You are not a bad Christian. You are a person living with a real condition that affects the brain — one of the most complex organs in the known universe — and you deserve both excellent medical care and a community of faith that walks alongside you without judgment.

That simple statement from our anonymous friend in the United States carries more data than a research report ever could. A person is alive today — present, grateful, purposeful — because of their faith. The research is measuring what this person has lived.

Spirituality is not optional. It never was. And Fresh Hope exists, in part, to create the space where faith and mental health are no longer in tension — where the church becomes the community of healing it was always meant to be.

ABOUT FRESH HOPE

Fresh Hope is an international network of Christian peer-support groups for those living with a mental health diagnosis and their loved ones. With 250+ weekly participants across 39+ countries, Fresh Hope integrates evidence-based recovery principles with faith-centered community. Find a group near you at freshhope.us

RESEARCH REFERENCE

Sapien Labs. Global Mind Health in 2025. February 2026. sapienlabs.org