The weather, amount of time since Christmas and failing New Year resolutions are all factors that are thought to spur feeling more down than usual every third Monday in January.

However, Christian disability charity Livability has warned there are other days depression can strike.

‘Lifting the lid’, a free six-week course, will also equip the Church to better understand mental health.

Mat Ray from Livability told Premier the Church should encourage Christians to speak about mental health.

He said: “We hear messages like, ‘if you really had faith, then you wouldn’t feel like this… if you really had trust in God then this would go away’.

“But that’s not really the case. Mental health is like health – it’s just that people can get ill, people can recover.

“We need the Church to be a place where people can talk about this, not just shove it under the carpet and not come to church until they feel better.”

Currently, one in four people in the UK are affected by a mental health issue in any given year, and mental health conditions are the second highest cause of absences reported to the Health and Safety Executive.

Ray said the Church has a role to play in removing the stigma surrounding mental health.

He added: “We want a Church that is prepared to lift the lid on some of those tough conversations.”

The course, which can be found on the charity’s website, was created with small groups in mind, drawing on well-known Bible stories to open up discussions on mental…

The headquarters in Wolverhampton employs 450 people and the company as a whole employs many communities across the country. 

Bill Marsh, the Team Leader of the Black Country Urban Industrial Mission (BCUIM) spoke to Premier about how the group helps employees in the manufacturing industry. 

BCUIM places chaplains in industrial work places and seeks to be the connection between church and the labour industry.

Bill Marsh said: “It is a real shock, not just to this area but also to many communities and the many customers that they have around the country and around the world. It’s always been a company which has sought to bring benefits to those communities through enriching the projects in which they’re involved.”

He explained their prayer for those working for Carillion: “It’s always been for the best for all of the stake holders caught up in this, they are a company that did seek to make a very positive difference in the communities in which they operated…so it’s going to affect an awful lot of people”

“One of the main things our chaplains do as we draw alongside people is to give them and encourage and affirm both their own value and the value of the tasks and work that they do in God’s sight.”

 The international development secretary wrote in the Daily Telegraph that this could happen if countries fail to “invest in their people”.

Penny Mordaunt added that the UK government “will not invest when others should be putting their hands in their pockets”.

Simon Kirkland from Christian Aid told Premier’s News Hour the government has a responsibility to countries that may be struggling.

Explaining, he said: “For example in Syria the government is obviously in crisis with the conflict that’s going on there but our responsibility is to help people there as best as we can.

“Sometimes funding civil society can be a very good way to help people even when their government may not be doing the right thing.”

Under legislation approved in 2015, the UK government is legally required to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid.

Mordaunt’s comments come two weeks after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK’s aid budget will be geared towards projects that promote its interests.

He also said the money will be “more sensibly distributed” to support foreign policy aims such as denying safe havens to Islamist militants.

Listen to Simon Kirkland from Christian Aid speaking with Premier’s Alex Williams: