Lexie Bailey, a North Greenville University psychology major, grew up with two unconventional parents, living in a household where her mom was a believer, but her dad wasn’t. She went to church with her grandparents – it is because of them that faith was instilled in her. Though she was a believer at six years old and baptized at eight years old, at this point she wasn’t consciously aware of what faith was. When she was ten, her parents divorced, and this altered her life, as a fourth grader, forever. In the months and up to a year following this, she stopped talking and was very angry and quiet – this was not normal for her. She was angry with God and with her parents, and she hated going to church.
Yet, around the age of 12 or 13, she started to see why the Lord had her go through those things. She desired to be a guidance counselor and decided to do psychology. This gave her something to look forward to that was set in stone. In the midst of all of this, though, she needed to learn how to forgive her parents and needed to go through the difficult process of doing that. Lexie was diagnosed with anxiety and depression at 14 years old, but her parents didn’t do anything about that at this time. She battled through this on her own from her eighth grade year until her junior year of high school.
In high school, she continued to heal, as she stopped having a relationship with her dad at age 14 due to there being no benefit to the relationship. She also continued to process things with the Lord. After having a junior year where it was painful to do anything, Lexie felt like she had found the light her senior year of high school. Her relationship with her mother was grown because her mom “saw here where she was.” Lexie was very honest with her mom and with herself, realizing that, “Things are going to get really bad if they don’t really get better.”
Lexie learned how to advocate for herself during this season: she went to beneficial therapy three times a week, reevaluated her life and her church presence, and found a new group of friends that encouraged her. She realized that at the church she’d been at her entire life, where she joined the youth group at in seventh grade, a lot was happening that pushed her to decide to leave. She realized that “there wasn’t going to be any change in the youth group.” She had never been able to understand why things were the way they were growing up, or why things in church never rang true. Lexie was able to attend a new local church that she felt at home at, but it wasn’t until her freshman year of college at North Greenville University that she knew she was firm in her faith. This season was the “…first time she every looked at the Bible completely different,” even though she still had (and always will have) a lot of questions.
When Covid happened, another halt happened in Lexie’s life – she became sick with extreme anxiety. She was living with her mom and her best friend at the time, and she took a downfall. She “hated being at her house” and “struggled with how to get better and how to move on with that and heal.” Medication wasn’t being taken and having mental health issues in this season was odd. Though she struggled to come back to North Greenville after this quarantine due to anxiety, the Lord said “Hey, come back.” There was much purpose in coming back.
Lexie began to dive into psychology her sophomore year, and she loved this because she was able to learn about theories and relationships. Her passion is in childhood prevention and suicide prevention because,
“Some things would’ve been different in my life if people would’ve intervened,” and “People get overlooked.” Since becoming passionate about self-advocacy in her high school years, could now carry that passion into her studies and future career. Lexie realized this advocacy was important additionally because, “No one knows how you feel at the end of the day except yourself. People can’t read your mind.” Though this was hard to articulate with anxiety, she was able to learn to take care of herself and to be proactive about that.
When it came to implementing that passion, she found that “Psychology, as a field. Can be looked down upon in general many times and sometimes even at NGU.” As a psychology major, she struggled to put a Christian perspective on everything at times because, “The Lord influences us in ways we don’t know.” Lexie had to decide whether to be a Christian psychologist or a psychologist who is a Christian. While Christian psychology is more focused on faith, psychology itself studies imbalances in brain and the science behind it. She explains that “Being in a Christian environment makes it hard, at times, to openly talk about mental health and understand where a person can be coming from. Mental health can be forgotten about or brushed to the side. When, in fact, it’s a very important thing to understand the background of where someone is coming from.” Not only this, but she has been ablet to see that even advocacy for mental health in ministry settings isn’t taken seriously.
According to Lexie, some pastors who talk about mental health are looked down upon and some people who have mental health issues are looked down upon. She states, “When mental health is talked about, it’s shameful or they (therapists) make you think that it’s your fault.” Lexie has said that some Christian counselors have opted to encourage patients with “…You just need to pray more,” and, “It’ll go away.” The church, she says, “…doesn’t understand the difference between being depressed and depression.” As a result of all of this, Lexie had to figure out the faith she was going to have.
A lot of churches, she realized, don’t work for someone with mental health problems. During Covid, she found that church online worked for her. She learned that “…it’s okay to step out of the box; you can connect yourself in a lot of different ways.” Lexie desires to see openness and mental health teams, or a mental health advocate, be a part of a church. It would be a parallel to hospital teams/visitors, just for mental health instead of physical health. She wants to advocate for psychological counseling at churches as well because pastoral counseling doesn’t address the mental health itself, just the Biblical and theological perspectives. She encourages advocacy for mental health in ministry through stating, “There’s lots of ways to talk about mental health in the Bible, but it needs to be called upon…the people of the Bible are real people.”
Lexie also wants to ensure that the importance of mental health being a journey is known. As a part of this, she wants the church to learn more about what people actually go through. She also wants the church, and people in general, to help celebrate recovery as a part of that journey but to not push them too hard throughout it. All in all, Lexie said that simply “Letting people know you’re there for them” is a huge way to advocate for someone in their mental health.
In her own life on campus, the North Greenville University psychology department has poured into her and given her grace, which is something she doesn’t give herself often. Her professors pray for her when she really needs it. Lexie is trying to help foster the commuter ministry at NGU because it is “hard to find a space” as a commuter and the commuter ministry has helped her in that. She is encouraging faculty and staff to take action so that commuters can “connect on campus by making time here most valuable.” Lastly, she has grown in this season on campus by having mentorship/mentee relationships where she can talk about earthly life and spiritual life with them one-on-one.
She is encouraged by the verse Zephaniah 3:17, which says, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Lexie said that this verse “…talks about how God is mighty to save you. I need saving; I feel like I am drowning in the world…My mind feels like it is racing,” and, “My mind has a tendency to lie to itself and make it believe things that are not true about myself, and it says that the Lord will quiet us with His love.” As a psychology major, she has to “see the proof” for everything, and there is proof for her that scriptures are a way for her to advocate for her own mental health.