Rob Waller

What's your thing?
Psychiatry

Dr Rob Waller is a Consultant Psychiatrist working for the National Health Service in Scotland. He is married to Susanna and lives in Edinburgh with their sons James and David. His special interests are in Medical Education and Spirituality and he wants to empower mental health professionals to use their skills in a godly way, believing that the good news of Christianity brings an essential contribution to mental health services.

My Articles

O is for Occipital Lobe by illuminaut

A man who wears two hats looks stupid, or so my mother used to tell me... Aged 30, I found myself training as a psychiatrist in the NHS and serving as an elder in a church. Carl Jung may have said that ‘psychiatrists are the new priests’, but I thought this was taking things a step too far. There was little connection between what I did on Sunday and my work on Monday.

Wearing two hats is also unstable. One typically falls off, usually at an inopportune time. God gave us one head and, though we may have to juggle roles such as family and work, there is meant to be communication between the two. Shared themes, core beliefs, common ground. I realised I was not well thought through and that this would lead to me making assumptions (in both roles) unless I addressed this.
 
I also realised that this would be a relatively poorly trodden path. There are Christian psychiatrists older than I, to whom I am indebted, but their views needed to be translated for the 21st Century. There were also people who only spoke from one perspective – Psychiatrists who happened to be Christians, or Christians who happened to be Psychiatrists. With a lot of help and wisdom from God, I was going to have to try and get the right mix.
 
To try and sort out my head, I did what many people did in the ‘noughties’ and started a blog. I wrote about my faith, my work, my conflicts and my thoughts. To my surprise, other people thought it was worth reading; and their comments honed both my writing and my conclusions. One regular theme was my anger at the injustice people with mental health problems face. This was not only in society, where raw deals are common, but also in the church where surely the bride of Christ is meant to manage things better.
 
Like Habakkuk’s complaint against God (Hab 1:2), this was a driving force for my life – the fire in my belly that meant I not only ought to work or wished to work, but wanted to work. I couldn’t not. The writing became a conversation, then a meeting in my front room, then in a bigger room in a pub – and slowly a movement.
 
God calls leaders in the Bible, but he rarely calls them alone. I met an old University friend, Will Van Der Hart, by now ordained, and found he had similar ideas. We discovered groups meeting across the country and many unanswered questions in the church. We teamed up with Premier Christian Media and, in 2007, Mind and Soul in its current form was born.
 
The blessing and grace of God have been amazing. As both of us have seen the arrival of two young children over the past three years, we were not exactly putting ourselves forward. Yet almost the less we did, the more we seemed to be offered. We have partnered with some amazing groups to run large conferences. We’ve been able to put hundreds of resources on a free website. We’ve published one book and the second is at the printers. We’ve been invited to Whitehall… Not to the Palace yet, though!
 
We have both also learned huge lessons and are still very much on a journey. The most important lesson is that this work is nothing without Him, and it stands or falls on the extent to which we realise this. It is not a social concern or charity initiative; it is something close to God’s heart for the ‘poor in spirit’. We take this momentum as a sign of His blessing and of having hit a painful nail on the head.
 
This is also a task unfinished. Our ten-year goals are to see a church that understands mental illness and a mental health service that understands what the church can offer. Both Mind AND Soul in the mix together and 100% of both; not an uneasy 50-50 truce. We have only begun to scratch the surface with what we have done so far, but there is a strategy and a growing influence.
 
As I consider the years ahead, three things must be core to who I am. The first is sustainability. One blessing of living in Edinburgh (apart from the beautiful buildings and fancy shops!) is that I can easily say ‘No’ to invitations to speak from down south. I turn down far more than I accept. Technology is a great help – a mobile phone, email, an automated website with free downloads. But not too much technology – I don’t have an iPhone, I keep date nights with my wife. I know where the ‘off’ button is.
 
The second is to remember that sustainability leads to succession (without which there is no success, as someone said).  This is Mind and Soul, a national network. Not me, not Will – we pray it will out-live us if the task is still ahead. If we have tapped into something big, then harnessing that power and the people involved is part of the future. As we are asked to do more, delegation and trust becomes musts. And it enriches us so much more than going it alone.
 
The third thing is the most important. Jesus said to Martha that she was worried about many things, but praised Martha for choosing what was better (Luke 10:41-42). Am I worried about the future of Mind and Soul? I have all the usual concerns, but in truth I am concerned with only one thing – that I retain my hunger for God and the complaint he has placed in me.

For more information and resources, visit Mind and Soul

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Mind and Soul

A man who wears two hats looks stupid, or so my mother used to tell me... Aged 30, I found myself training as a psychiatrist in the NHS and serving as an elder in a church. Carl Jung may have said that ‘psychiatrists are the new priests’, but I thought this was taking things a step too far. There was little connection between what I did on Sunday and my work on Monday.