Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of The All Genera. I have on the show today my good friend Brooke Keels. Brooke has a PhD in psychology and serves as the executive director of counseling services for mercy multiplied and we will explain we talk quite a bit about what mercy multiplied is and Brooke is just super wise at combining her background in psychology. She served over 10 years as a counselor and has worked with a lot of people who deal

with addictions and trauma and other mental health issues. So she is really an expert on issues of mental health and she's also very gospel centered. And I love how she combines the gospel with robust psychology and a real just as you'll see kind of just an honest evaluation of how we should think through things like mental health and medication and abuse and all these things. So I'm super excited to have her on the show.

So I've really gotten to know her over over the last year and have learned so much from her. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash The All Genera or just check out the show notes for the info support the show for as little five bucks a month to get access to premium content and become a member of the prestigious the highly acclaimed theology in the raw community.

It's a bunch of yeah a bunch of rag tag Christians who just kind of want to mix it up and they support the show and they join the patreon the All Genera community and if you want to be part of that community then go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw okay without further do let's get to know the one and only doctor Brooke keels.

Hello friends welcome back to another episode of the All Genera. I'm here with my friend Brooke keels. Brooke thanks so much for being on the podcast for the first time.

Yeah so glad to be here.

So we just got done speaking at the Q ideas cultural summit no relation to QAnon for those of you who need that disclaimer.

Well I did this we're recording this just a few days after we spoke at it in late April this might be released or this will be released sometime in May I think according my schedule.

Anyway you gave a well how about no sorry we're jumping too far in can you just give us a little background of who you are and how you got and what you do and how you got into that this field.

Sure yeah yeah so I'm you know obviously Brooke keels as you said I'm originally from Louisiana I grew up.

My dad was as he liked to say a bivocational pastor so he was a preacher and a psychologist and my mom's a social worker and I'm only child and so obviously I went into therapy.

Because I needed it so yeah so I ended up I have my masters in counseling and a PhD in family therapy and I'm a licensed counselor and actually several states now and so I ended up you know was an academia teaching over kind of a

accreditation like that sort of thing ended up moving into program design for addiction treatment and was a clinical director for an Adolescent addiction treatment center for Adolescent males.

We then moved into young adult males and then I received a call from Mercy multiplied who had actually been connected with for years because their original home is from my hometown in Monroe Louisiana and my mom had volunteered there as long as I can remember.

And so just received a call they were wanting to really shift in a direction of you know what they've seen in just the level of trauma that had increased and that really needed to make sure that clinically.

We're meeting the needs of the of the residents and what's really unique about Mercy is that it's fully donor funded so.

Each young woman gets to come free of charge and it's a six to nine month residential counseling and then we've expanded into out outpatient so we now have an outpatient model the Louisiana home is now outpatient and then we also do outreach so we have.

We are one of my favorite things to do is actually train and equip pastors and lay people and anybody who's helping anybody just how to be healthy in order.

To actually help others out of the overflow and understand their their place in the church and that you know helping people that are hurting is not just for professionals that the church has a place but also that we can all you know work together.

In that spot so what we do in Mercy is what I like to say is like the highest level clinical with the deepest spiritual and so you know and we just combine those things I think beautifully and not just because that's part of my job is to make sure we do that but I really think we do a great a great job and been around for 38 years now so our founder and president is still around and just fantastic and we have an incredible CEO and just all of our staff honestly.

It's a lot of women and we make it work and that's pretty great so it then so again it's a it's a res I mean people can go check in for four to six months and it's 100% funded doesn't cost 100% yeah but it's also voluntary so each each you know young woman has to choose to be here so it's from age age 13 to 32 so even our 13 year olds have to decide because our founder was just really passionate that we were not going to force anybody.

To do this and so we are very upfront that we are yes clinical will do counseling but it is all all Jesus all the time so you got to really make sure you want to do that.

...