What is a Mental Health Coach?

Mental health coaching is a form of strengths-based support for persons living with serious mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder). Coaches help clients develop a healthy balance in life, give guidance in decision making, offer support in navigating mental health difficulties, and assistance in establishing a recovery plan. Coaches help clients find ways to obtain and maintain stability, manage difficult symptoms, rebuild relationships, and find a purpose for living. Coaches also help clients find resources for professional care and treatment, family support, and education.

What is the role of a Mental Health Coach?

Mental health coaches are unlike licensed mental health care providers in that coaches do not diagnose or offer professional care or treatment for mental health difficulties and disorders. Coaches support any positive change, helping persons in professional care to manage symptoms, build support for recovery, and work on life goals such as relationships, work, and education. Mental health coaching is action-oriented with an emphasis on improving one’s present life and reaching goals for the future.

Mental health coaches use a partnership model wherein the client is considered to be the expert on his or her life, the one who decides what is worth doing, while the coach provides expertise in supporting successful change. Mental health coaching focuses on achieving any goals important to the client, not just recovery-related goals. Mental health coaching emphasizes honoring values and making principle-based decisions, creating a clear plan of action, and using current strengths to reach future goals. The coach provides accountability to help the client stay on track.

Recovery Alive 101 & 201 provides cutting-edge training to help coaches and facilitators competently and compassionately engage and support those in their community suffering from depression, addiction, grief, anxiety, relationship issues and countless other struggles and soul-wounds in a group setting.

This program consists of two 12-hour courses built on the proven 12-step recovery process and provides a faith-based, “in-house” recovery resource you can plug into your church or community to help people live set free from past pains, patterns and hurts.

What is a Biblical Counselor?

A Biblical Counselor uses principles from God’s Word as the foundation for guidance, support, and personal growth. Biblical Counselors integrate spiritual truths from the Bible with counseling techniques to help individuals address emotional, relational, and mental health challenges. They aim to facilitate healing, transformation, and restoration in a person’s life by aligning their approach with Christian faith and values. Often, they operate within a church or paraprofessional ministry setting, providing support in a community or faith-based environment.

The role of a Biblical Counselor is to provide spiritual guidance and support to individuals facing various personal, relational, or spiritual challenges. Grounded in Christian beliefs, Biblical Counselors help clients understand their struggles through the lens of Scripture, emphasizing the transformative power of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit. Their primary goal is to guide people towards spiritual growth, healing, and lasting change by aligning their thoughts and behaviors with Biblical principles.

Biblical Counseling often operates within a church or paraprofessional ministry setting, focusing on spiritual development rather than clinical diagnosis or therapy. It complements rather than replaces traditional mental health counseling, especially for those seeking guidance grounded in Christian faith.

This specialization in Addiction and Recovery helps leaders recognize that addiction is now one of the top public health issue in the United States. Addiction can tear apart individuals and families and destroy lives. As Christians, God wants us to be His instruments of healing and restoration for those caught in the chains of addiction. The good news is that with today’s incredible medical and scientific advances that have refined the way we understand addictions, and with the application of spiritual transformation and renewal, we can offer real hope.