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The Church’s Vulnerable YSAs

8 April 2008 @ 6:31 pm | 2 comments

Are the Church’s young single adults its most vulnerable group?   Increasing mental health challenges and faltering church activity are two striking examples that suggest they are.

LDS therapists anticipate a greater need for mental health counseling for young adults, particularly missionaries.

[College students and military recruits] provide the bulk of missionaries sent out by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and because mental illness knows no boundary lines, those who find themselves with mental illness while serving a mission need help from trained providers, he said. “I’m quite sure these disorders among missionaries will continue to increase over time, and it will require additional attention and resources.”

The total number of missionaries who suffer from some form of mental disorder wasn’t disclosed, but of those who return home early because of mental health issues, 40 percent suffer from depression, 23 percent from anxiety, 14 percent are suicidal and 9 percent exhibit obsessive compulsive disorder, or a “perfectionism higher than expected for their age group,” he said.

Also, BCC has a very interesting discussion on Single Wards and the inactivity levels of YSAs.  The numbers touted in the comments suggest that 8-14% of YSAs are active (!) which jive with what was suggested in Sunday’s press conference with the new Young Women’s Presidency.

When asked how they planned to cope with the fact that as many as 80 percent of the single Mormon women between 18 and 30 are no longer active in the LDS Church, Elaine Dalton, Young Women president, said, “That is the question of the day. . .I don’t know that we have all the answers right now.”

Several comments at BCC suggest that smaller singles wards (or even branches) would better involve singles and that they would be less likely to get lost in the crowd.  

I definitely benefited from a small singles ward that could use anyone who came by its way.  I used to resent the larger “meat-market” singles wards a few stakes away, but no more. 

Saving millions of children simply.

Nearly 10 million children die each year before reaching their fifth birthday, and the saddest part is that most of those deaths are quite predictable, easily preventable, and utterly treatable. While it is true that some children worldwide die of incurable cancers, tragic accidents, or unpredictable natural disasters, most do not. Nor do they die of diseases like AIDS, avian flu, and SARS, conditions which get most of the media attention. Most children die, year after year after year, of diseases that we in developed countries either don’t see anymore because they are systematically prevented, or aren’t even consider life-threatening. Pneumonia, diarrhea and complications during childbirth are currently responsible for nearly three-quarters of all of these deaths . . .

Recent scientific studies show that 60 percent of those children’s lives could be saved by inexpensive, proven interventions. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a major donor in the Measles Initiative, a vaccine campaign that has decreased the number of deaths due to measles by 500,000 in just six years! Other simple interventions — such as a simple salt solution for dehydration, sleeping under insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria, and breast feeding infants — are also highly effective at saving children’s lives.

4 April 2008 @ 10:40 am | No comments

Avoid a “fast-mood mentality” with exercise.

20 February 2008 @ 10:42 am | No comments