Highlights of A Christian’s Guide to Mental Illness
This book promises to be “ruthlessly practical.” And it is. Written by a psychologist and a pastor, both of whom are Reformed, it brings a necessary dose of compassion and understanding to the issues around mental illness. My full review of it will come later. Today just let me share with you a few highlights:
Some Christians believe that mental illness is simply a modern idea dreamed up by God-defying psychiatrists, soul-denying psychologists, money-making drug companies, and blame-shifting sinners. Church history says otherwise (as does modern medical research). To give just one example, mental illness was accepted as genuine and treated seriously by some of the greatest Christian experts in soul care that God has ever given to the church — the Puritans. (pp.8-9)
…we should say, ‘He has a mental illness,’ or ‘I have a mental illness. This important switch applies the label to the problem, not the person, and therefore defines the problem the person has, rather than defining the person as a problem. The switch of verb from ‘is’ to ‘has’ ensures that a person is not defined in their entirety by their problem. (p.19)
Delay, deny, defend. That basically sums up my own reaction to my depression. Looking back, I now see that I have had low-grade depression for most of my adult life but had gotten so used to it that it just felt normal. However, the multiplication of major life stressors during a short space of time in my early fifties multiplied and deepened my depressive tendencies. (p.72)
As our brain is the most complicated organ in the body, we shouldn’t be surprised that mental illness can affect us. For example, there is research showing that schizophrenia is possibly connected with autoimmune disorders. Also, researchers have found common genetic factors in five mental disorders. Interestingly, even the seventeenth-century Puritans distinguished between depression which had physical causes and those which had spiritual causes. (pp.82-83)
Although we should normally not consider this cause first, we acknowledge that our sinful attitudes, desires, and actions can cause or least contribute to mental illness. The most common causes of mental illness are addictions, immorality, greed, overwork, bitterness, anger, hatred, pornography, idolatry, and sinful thought patterns. (pp.83-84)
The denial of mental disorders or of the possibility that meds could help is essentially a denial of biblical anthropology in that it is a denial of the extensive, damaging effects of the fall upon our whole humanity…Although Christians with heart disease, diabetes, blood disorders, or cancer do not think that it is unspiritual to seek and use medicines to relieve their symptoms and even cure their illness, many seem to think that there is some special spiritual virtue in suffering mental illness for months and years without any medical intervention. Family and friends, however, don’t usually see much virtue in this approach! Taking meds can be an act of self-denial and of service to others. (pp.133-134)
The greatest error we can make is condemnation. Usually, the worst thing you can do is criticize people with mental illness, tell them that they are to blame, they are guilty, they are weak, they are not being Christian, and so on. In many cases it’s like blaming someone for having cancer or diabetes. It is grossly unfair and heaps false guilt on top of everything else. (pp.188-189)
One thing the mentally ill often have to contend with is people who know nothing volunteering or even forcing their own diagnoses and prescriptions on them. They pick up pieces of information in popular culture or on websites, or from some extremist or other, and then use that little knowledge to attempt to cure someone with mental illness. This is not only foolish; it’s dangerous. (p.189)
