Do today's mentally ill patients receive all the help and support they need? “Not usually,” says veteran Chaplain Robert W. Engstrom, now retired, who specialized in hope-filled spiritually-based care to the mentally ill for more than two decades, most of them at AdventHealth in Orlando, Florida. “Even in our supposedly sophisticated era,” Chaplain Engstrom says, “many people with mental illness are stigmatized, ostracized, marginalized, or worse.”

This monograph is Chaplain Engstrom’s clarion call for respectful, compassionate interdisciplinary whole-person care for those suffering from mental illness. All caregivers who have contact with the mentally ill, whether in a clinical or non-clinical setting, and whether they are trained psychiatric professionals or not, will find this book to be an indispensable look into the world of people with mental illness and how to help them.

“There is always hope,” Chaplain Engstrom would say, and then he might talk about Ralph, a suicidal pastor who recovered thanks to his wife’s loving intervention and a compassionate team of caregivers. Or he might describe Sandy, a young woman whose first psychotic break occurred just weeks before her planned wedding to her childhood sweetheart. She began hearing voices that told her to do irrational things, like throwing herself into a river in her wedding gown. A nurse named Norma gained Sandy’s trust, listened to her story, and helped her believe that someone understood and cared.

You will find it moving, inspirational, compelling, convincing, practical, and motivational. The resources and patient questionnaires included will help you take whole-person care for the mentally ill to the next level. The insights and multiple true-life illustrations will help you walk with a mentally ill person from out of the dark depths of their own personal hell to see again what the poet, Dante, called “the shining world” when he wrote, “and so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.”