Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Spiritual First Aid

Research-driven Christian mental health courses and resources that take the guesswork out of peer-to-peer support.

By Jamie Aten, Ph.D., & Kent Annan, M.Div.

Co-Founders of Spiritual First Aid

🕒 15 min read

 [Possibly add here outline of blog]

We know firsthand how lonely and overwhelming it can feel to walk with others through mental health struggles. That’s why we created Spiritual First Aid to equip everyday Christian helpers, churches, and organizations with the training and tools they need to turn their compassion into effective care for everything from mild stress to mass trauma. As the mental health crisis continues to grow, so does the need for practical and spiritually grounded ways to respond. People are facing emotional struggles, spiritual distress, personal trauma, and overwhelming loneliness, often without access to the support they need. Spiritual First Aid offers a simple and research-backed framework to meet these needs with confidence and compassion. In the post that follows, you will discover how this approach began, how it works, and how it is making a difference in communities around the world.

The Mental Health Care Divide

With more people needing help than there are professional mental health resources available, many individuals find themselves struggling alone. Mental health trends indicate a significant rise in anxiety, depression, and other emotional struggles across all sectors of society. In the workplace, employees are increasingly reporting burnout and stress. Within the church, Lifeway Research found that 63% of pastors report that stress is a significant mental challenge in their ministry roles. Likewise, churches are witnessing a growing number of congregants facing mental health challenges. 

The Need for Spiritual First Aid 

Spiritual First Aid aims to address the critical mental health care gap by equipping everyday people with the tools to provide immediate, frontline spiritual and emotional support. It also seeks to prepare natural helpers so that they are better prepared to recognize and respond to spiritual and emotional challenges when and where they are encountered. That is, Spiritual First Aid addresses the urgent need for mental health support by equipping anyone with the desire to help with the tools to make a difference. By providing this sort of “in-between” care, you can make a big difference in the lives of people who are hurting.

Spiritual First Aid Defined

Spiritual First Aid teaches peer-to-peer courses that transform everyday Christian helpers, churches, and organizations on the frontlines of the mental health crisis into spiritual first responders and mental health champions. It teaches frontline peer-to-peer spiritual and emotional care using our proven BLESS CPR framework, which incorporates trauma-informed best practices. As the first and only peer-to-peer spiritual and emotional care program built on biblical wisdom, scientific research, and trauma-informed insights from the ground up, Spiritual First Aid makes complex care practices simple to understand and easy to use.

Peer-to-Peer Care

Our research indicates that receiving basic spiritual peer-to-peer support can have a significant impact on mental health and well-being, including spiritual growth. To leverage this untapped resource, we created Spiritual First Aid using a peer-to-peer (e.g., friend-to-friend, neighbor-to-neighbor) care approach. Our peer-to-peer model ensures that no one has to navigate their struggles without support, bridging the gap between those in need of help and the professional resources that may not be readily accessible. By empowering everyday people to provide crucial in-between care, we can extend the reach of mental health support and offer timely assistance when professional help is not immediately available. Spiritual First Aid also helps connect individuals to the professional mental health services and community resources they need by teaching learners when, where, and how to refer. 

Getting Certified in Spiritual First Aid

To get certified in Spiritual First Aid, learners first enroll in the course, complete all six required sessions, and pass a brief assessment. The course includes high-quality, professionally produced training videos that make learning engaging and accessible. Each session is hands-on, featuring a digital workbook with exercises and activities, including devotionals, case studies, and role-playing scenarios, whether you’re completing the course individually or in a group. To help you apply what you’ve learned, the course also provides a digital field guide, along with protocols and tools for real-world use. Additionally, the course offers flexible learning formats, including on-demand courses, facilitator-led groups and workshops, as well as trainer-led workshops. Additionally, we offer several other mini courses for those not seeking certification; more on that later in the article.  

Who Uses Spiritual First Aid

You don’t have to be a professional helper or have extensive experience to make a meaningful impact. We created Spiritual First Aid so that anyone with a desire to help can do so, regardless of their education, training, or profession. People across all sectors and across the globe are using this program to provide support in their communities. Spiritual First Aid is being utilized by: churches, hospitals, nonprofits, businesses, summer camps, colleges, seminaries, schools, healthcare organizations, mission groups, international nongovernmental organizations, and professional associations. It's helping: church leaders and volunteers, school teachers and administrators, college chaplain offices, nonprofit professionals, homeless mission staff, mission member care teams, community members, healthcare professionals, mental health providers, campus ministers, and everyday people make a difference. No matter your role, Spiritual First Aid equips you with the tools to offer compassionate care and support to those in need.

Who Spiritual First Aid Helps

Spiritual First Aid is designed to equip you to care for individuals facing a wide range of challenges, from mild stress to mass trauma. You’ll learn skills you can use to address everyday pressures like loneliness, strained relationships, financial worries, family conflicts, and emotional exhaustion. The course also provides the tools needed to offer compassionate, effective support for challenges such as anxiety, depression, grief, burnout, and emotional exhaustion. Spiritual First Aid also equips you to respond to crises like suicidal ideation, safety issues, natural disasters, and community violence. This comprehensive approach ensures that you are prepared to provide care within the scope of a peer helper, offering initial support while knowing how and when to connect individuals to additional church and community resources, as well as professional mental health services. You’ll be equipped to help, knowing that effective support includes connecting people to a broader network of care, so you don’t have to shoulder the burden alone.

A Proven and Reliable Approach

The effectiveness of Spiritual First Aid is backed by empirical research. An empirical study led by Georgia State University’s Ken Matheny Center For The Study of Stress, Trauma, and Resilience found that those who completed the course improved their ability to recognize and respond to common spiritual and emotional struggles and were more likely to address potential safety issues like suicide. In other research, data collected over the last six months from more than 260 participants in our facilitator-led workshop version of the course, which we’ve been piloting, showed a 20% increase in helper confidence in recognizing spiritual, emotional, and trauma-related struggles, as measured by pre- and post-course surveys. Additional effectiveness studies are underway, including a randomized controlled clinical trial of Spiritual First Aid in Ukraine. 

Developed in Disaster Zones, Designed for Everyday Life

Spiritual First Aid was created in response to disasters and refined through real-world challenges. What started as a frontline tool for crisis response has been thoughtfully adapted to meet the everyday mental health struggles people face—like loneliness, anxiety, grief, and burnout. Spiritual First Aid was developed from over thirty years of frontline ministry service, twenty-four years of professional mental health experience, fifteen years of research, and another five years of field testing. But Spiritual First Aid’s development doesn’t stop with our team. This is where our story and your story overlap. As an organization, we are an end-to-end knowledge translation innovation hub. This means we begin with biblical guidance, conduct original research, and draw on our extensive expertise in trauma. We combine all of this with the insights and feedback we receive from our Spiritual First Aid community. Before releasing updates or new offerings, in addition to what we bring to the process, we spend extensive time in one-on-one calls, running focus groups, and piloting new ideas, all the while collecting data on effectiveness. Using design thinking methods, we cycle through this process several times, learning, ideating, prototyping, testing, and repeating. 

Grounded in Scripture

Each step of Spiritual First Aid is guided by specific scriptures, ensuring that the care provided is deeply rooted in biblical teachings. Spiritual First Aid was inspired by Psalm 20:1-5, "May the Lord answer you when you are in distress…May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support.” This passage inspired Spiritual First Aid because it emphasizes the importance of helping others in their time of need, reflecting God's desire for us to offer sanctuary and support to those in distress. To ensure that the sanctuary could be extended to those in the church and beyond its doors as Christ commands us to love our neighbors (Matthew 22:37-39), we also share insights and tools that make it possible to care well for others in organizations and communities. 

Research-Developed Curriculum

One of the reasons we created Spiritual First Aid was because we saw a gap in research-developed training programs. This motivated us to integrate what we’ve learned, helping people across the globe with rigorous research and practical experience. Specifically, Spiritual First Aid was developed from over thirty years of frontline ministry service, twenty-four years of professional mental health experience, fifteen years of research, and another five years of field-testing experience. Spiritual First Aid is not just based on existing research; we pioneered this model through our original research. In fact, it has been supported by over seven million dollars in grant funding, resulting in more than 50 research studies and over 150 scholarly publications. This ensures that it is both scientifically sound and practically applicable.

The Five BLESS Needs

At the heart of the BLESS CPR framework is what we refer to as BLESS needs (which stands for biological, livelihood, emotional, social, and spiritual needs). These are the five core needs our research shows are most likely to cause spiritual and emotional distress when unmet. Each need is deeply interconnected and can impact faith. Our studies also show trauma commonly causes these needs to go unmet. Because each need is interconnected with the others and ultimately impacts mental health, we teach a holistic approach to caring for the whole person. Here’s a brief look at some examples of what BLESS needs:

• Biological needs: Physical health, nutrition, sleep, well-being, and medical care.
• Livelihood needs: Financial stability, housing security, and access to education.
• Emotional needs: Mental health, coping, stress management, resilience.
• Social needs: Relationships, community connectedness, sense of belonging.
• Spiritual needs: Connection with God, faith, beliefs, meaning, purpose.

Now that you’re familiar with BLESS needs, let’s explore the overall step-by-step BLESS CPR framework. 

Understanding the BLESS CPR Framework

Spiritual First Aid is built around the BLESS CPR framework. Similar to medical first aid, which provides temporary care, Spiritual First Aid's BLESS CPR step-by-step framework helps people master small actions that make a big difference. Here’s a brief overview of the BLESS CPR step-by-step approach: 

• Step 1. BLESS triage: Sorting and prioritizing biological, livelihood, emotional, and spiritual needs.
• Step 2. Care with practical presence: Offering support through presence and practical help.
• Step 3. Provide coping practices: Sharing strategies to manage stress and trauma.
• Step 4. Refer and resource: Connecting individuals with additional resources, support systems, and professional services. 

With BLESS CPR, you’ll gain the know-how and skills to quickly triage and provide rapid care for spiritual, emotional, and trauma struggles. This includes learning how to prevent spiritual and emotional injuries from worsening, provide critical in-between care, and connect others with resources for long-term healing. Providing support in this way helps people positively engage their faith, feel more connected, cultivate healthy coping practices, and improve mental health outcomes. 

Course Options

All Spiritual First Aid courses are designed with flexible, accordion-style learning options, allowing you to complete them at your own pace, work through them as a group, or condense them into a one- or two-day workshop. Each course is all-inclusive and features expertly produced online training videos along with downloadable tools and resources to help you apply what you learn right away. Our flagship Certificate Course offers the most comprehensive training and includes full certification in the Spiritual First Aid model. In contrast, our mini courses are shorter, topic-specific trainings that focus on applying Spiritual First Aid to particular needs or contexts. Here’s a quick snapshot of our current course offerings:

• Spiritual First Aid Certificate Course: This course provides full certification and equips everyday Christian helpers, churches, and organizations to respond to spiritual and emotional needs using the BLESS CPR framework. Includes six sessions, digital workbook, field guide, assessments, and real-world application tools.
• Spiritual First Aid for Children and Adolescents Mini Course: A focused training designed to help adults provide age-appropriate care for young people experiencing emotional, social, or spiritual struggles. Includes practical tools, child-specific case examples, and guidance for schools, churches, and caregivers.
• Spiritual First Aid Basics Mini Course: A quick-start overview of the core principles of Spiritual First Aid. Ideal for those new to the model or seeking a quick start. Includes foundational teaching, practical steps, and tools to begin offering support right away.
• Becoming a Trauma-Informed Church, Organization, or Community: Mini Course and Toolkit. This course equips leaders and teams with practical steps to assess and improve trauma-informed care practices. Includes a short video course, action plan workbook, and a robust 57-resource toolkit to support organizational growth.

Depending on the format, the flagship certificate course typically requires around six to nine hours to complete, whereas our mini courses can be completed in as little as one to three hours. 

Join Us in Our Mission to Reverse the Mental Health Crisis

Mental health is complex, but with Spiritual First Aid, helping doesn’t have to be. In times when challenges can feel overwhelming, Spiritual First Aid provides essential tools and support that take the guesswork out of caring. Spiritual First Aid gives you a plan for leveraging your strengths, research-backed skills, and practical tools to unlock your potential as a helper. It’s a call to action for all of us to become better equipped to care for one another, to be the hands and feet of Christ to others. We invite you to join us on our mission to reverse the mental health crisis. Together, we can make a difference. Join the movement of Christian mental health champions working to bridge the gap between those needing care and professional mental health resources by getting certified in Spiritual First Aid today. Together, we can reverse the mental health crisis.