By Gil Harper
Gender-based violence (GBV), mental health and faith are deeply interwoven. For many survivors, faith is the thing that holds them together. For others, it is part of what makes the harm harder to name, leave or heal from. At We Will Speak Out South Africa (WWSOSA) and the Faith Action Collective to End GBV, we work in exactly this space, because for survivors of violence, the question is rarely “faith or mental health care?” It is usually both.
Faith as an anchor
For many survivors, faith offers real resilience: comfort in dark seasons, a community that shows up, and teachings that affirm dignity and reject abuse. Prayer, ritual and belonging can steady someone when everything else feels unstable. This is why we never approach faith communities as the problem. They are a vital part of the solution, and many survivors will turn to a faith leader long before they speak to a counsellor, a social worker or the police.
When faith becomes a risk factor
The same spaces can also do harm. Patriarchal misreadings of sacred texts have been used to justify abuse, to insist that women endure in silence, or to stigmatise those who speak out. Survivors often carry a particular kind of spiritual struggle: feeling abandoned by God, judged by their congregation, or caught between their safety and their community.
This includes spiritual abuse: the misuse of religious authority to silence, control or dismiss people who are harmed, including manipulation by faith leaders themselves. It is often invisible from the outside, and it can deepen shame, fear and isolation at exactly the moment a survivor most needs support.
That is why WWSOSA and the Faith Action Collective have created safe and courageous spaces to talk about spiritual abuse openly: what it looks like, how to recognise it, and how to deal with it. These are spaces where survivors, faith leaders and activists can name what has often gone unspoken, without fear of being judged or silenced.
The toll on mental health
The mental health consequences of GBV are serious. Survivors face a significantly higher risk of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety and substance use. Long-term or repeated exposure to violence worsens these outcomes, and can lead to deeper psychiatric distress.
Stigma compounds the harm. When religious and social stigma silences survivors, they are less likely to reach the clinical, counselling or legal services that could help. For a woman who believes that leaving or speaking up would mean betraying her faith or her community, the isolation can be profound.
Bridging faith and care
Healing does not require anyone to choose between their spirituality and professional support. Care must be faith-sensitive, respecting a survivor’s religious needs and avoiding what is sometimes called “faithism”, where a survivor’s faith is dismissed or treated as irrelevant. It must also equip faith leaders to recognise trauma, to reduce the stigma around mental health struggles, and to build safe referral pathways to clinical and legal professionals.
This is the thinking behind our Women Leaders’ Faith Retreats. These retreats give women of faith the space to share, vent and debrief their own trauma, many of them carrying heavy loads as leaders and carers in their communities. They also learn how to create that same kind of safe space within their own faith settings, so that healing multiplies outward rather than stopping with the individual.
Mobilising communities, transforming institutions
Individual healing matters, but it is not enough on its own. Violence is sustained by norms, and norms can only change when communities shift together. Involving faith leaders in anti-violence work helps turn harmful norms into cultures of accountability and healing.
Over the years, WWSOSA and the Faith Action Collective have run campaigns that bring faith communities into this work. They include the Joint Interfaith Statement of Commitment, which drew almost 700 signatories across eight faith traditions, and our #BoysDoCry campaign, which challenges the idea that emotion is weakness.
At the heart of this work is the Faith Leaders Gender Transformation Programme (FLGTP). Over the course of a year, we accompany faith leaders as they unlearn, learn and transform: first themselves, and then their faith institutions. They examine how their own backgrounds have shaped their views on gender, and take concrete steps to equip their communities to both prevent and respond to GBV. When a faith leader changes, the effect reaches every congregant, family and community they serve.
What this asks of all of us
Faith communities are not peripheral to this crisis. They are central to it, for good and for ill. The invitation is to build faith spaces and institutions where survivors are believed, where mental health is spoken about without shame, where leaders are held accountable, and where no one has to choose between their safety and their faith.
If you are a faith leader, we invite you to join us. If you are a survivor, you are not alone, and your faith is not something you need to leave behind in order to heal.