Urban Pastors' views on behavioral health needs, counseling and referral in churches located in resource-poor communities

Disadvantaged communities have fewer behavioral health resources available to them; by default, urban pastors are frontline mental health workers. Few studies have sought pastors’ views on how they handle present behavioral health issues.  This study’s goal was to discover the lived experience of urban pastors and how they counsel based upon their own paradigms.

Research questions were:

1.  What phenomena have pastors experienced when counseling individuals with emotional issues?

2.  What do pastors provide to individuals with behavioral health problems in their congregations/ communities?

Protestant pastors participated in individual 90 minute open-ended qualitative interviews (phenomenological methodology).  Pastors were solicited via purposive sample, and interviews were done at the church or by phone. Data on 48 White, Black, and Hispanic pastors from urban areas of Chicago and Los Angeles are presented.  Data was audio-recorded, transcribed and coded using Atlas.ti.

Three themes emerged:

1. Pastors discussed serious challenges that occurred in their own lives prior to entering the pastorate, how they overcame challenges, and how their challenges shape their present interactions with congregations and community.
2. Pastors discussed their feelings of competency or overwhelm when addressing behavioral needs of their congregations and communities.
3. Pastors discussed how racial and educational experiences shaped their interactions with others when dealing with behavioral health issues.

The increased understanding of the lived experiences of pastors can lead to healthy collaborations between practitioners and pastors when addressing behavioral health concerns.