When I was a teenager, I liked a boy who attempted suicide. I remember calling his home on an ordinary day. His mother answered the phone and told me a harrowing story of how she came home, and found his tall lanky body in the bathtub with blood spilling into the water and onto the floor. He had cut his wrists, she said. As she heard me gasp, she assured me that he was still alive, and at an in-patient treatment center. She would be sure to tell him that I called.
Months later, I sat next to my friend in his mother's house. I held his hands in mine and asked, "Can I see?"
He turned his palms upwards revealing the lifetime reminder of the depths of depression and the act of the desperate. Although he assured me that he was okay now, I said nothing. Torn between sadness for his pain and happiness for his survival, I said nothing.
I had basic information about depression -- the kind one gets from 9th grade health class and after-school specials -- but I had no way to understand it, up close, in someone I cared for. I had, I would eventually learn, no way to understand it in myself. I didn't know the slippage between teenage angst, frustration and grief to melancholy, depression and suicidal ideation. I didn't know what separated my own bare wrists from the scarred wrists of my friend.
Although my friend was not particularly religious, I was. I had been raised in the church. My youth group at church was one of my primary social worlds. I spent my weekends and some weeknights in drama ministry, youth choir, Sunday school, church tutoring, Vacation Bible School, etc.
My church, like many others, conveyed messages about mental health:
I had little language for thinking about mental illness, and no faith for living with it.
I now wonder what might have happened if I had ever heard a minister preach about mental health. When the church quoted Matthew 25:35-40 about how we should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, invite in the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned and look after the sick, people living with mental health challenges didn't count. What would I have thought if we had prayed for people living with depressions, schizophrenias, or borderline personality disorders like we prayed for people who were diagnosed with diabetes or who had heart attacks?
Would I have been able to tell my friend that God loves him, no matter what? Would I have known an adult to whom I felt safe sharing my own feelings? Could I have understood that prayer and gratitude lists did not cure depression? Or, more importantly, might I have known that my debilitating sadness did not mean I lacked faith? Might I have known that I didn't have to pretend I was really happy?
Perhaps my minister didn't know much about mental health. Perhaps the pastor didn't have much information about what churches could do. I know that clergy need to be educated about mental health. They need to preach about it, teach about it, and have relationships with local mental health care professionals.
This is an ideal time for individuals and communities to learn about mental illness and offer solidarity and hope to those who live with mental health challenges. Oct. 2-8, 2011 is Mental Health Awareness Week. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), offers special resources for faith communities with suggestions on what clergy and laity can do.
While it may seem like a lot to ask of religious leaders, it's actually easier for young people and adults to get to clergy than it is to get to a mental health professional. According to NAMI, churches, temples, mosques and faith communities reach 70 percent of the American population each month. Clergy outnumber psychiatrists by nearly 10 to one, and are more equitably distributed geographically than health professionals.
More importantly, religious communities are best-positioned to respond to the faith issues that arise for people who live with and love those who live with mental illnesses. They can tell us that our condition is not a result of angering or disappointing or failing God.
There are many faithful people who live with mental health challenges. Most of the time, we walk amongst the regular praying-public as if we are invisible. But we are in congregations, Bible studies and prayer meetings wondering if there is a place for us there. We wonder if there is room for us to be honest about our struggles. We are waiting to hear our stories from places that we recognize as holy.
Follow Monica A. Coleman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/monicaacoleman
Christian mental health worker sacked after asking for better ...
psychiatry - Christian Medical Fellowship
Should a Christian take anti-depressants or other mental health ...
christians with mental illness : Invisible Illness Awareness Week
Most all have heard through the news media in different countries the awful cases of sexual abuse from Ireland to America.
An old Confusian proverbs states, "First put order in your own house before one tells ones' neighbor to put order in their house".
First off, a great article.
However, it is called Mental Illness Awareness Week. Please fix.
Thanks.
I could only assure them there was nothing wrong with them spiritually, but that their problems were often organic and related to the brain, an organ just like the pancreas or liver, susceptible to illness. Sometimes, their symptoms could be addressed with medication - their biggest fear. But once they accepted the medical model of axis I disorders, they were soon on their way to a better life.
Counseling by a qualified psychologist could help them with phobias, personality disorders, and compromised childhoods.There is opportunity in the Church to minister to these people. However, it would be foolhardy for a pastor to attempt to help someone with say, borderline personality disorder. Pastors are simply not qualified to handle most of those with mental illnesses except to assure them that they are loved by God; that they belong in the community of witness.
If anything serious is to be done, pastors would do well to know how to refer these folks to legitimate sources for treatment for psychological/psychiatric healing; to follow up without being invasive. Above all, these folks deserve affirmation of their humanity, and their spirituality.
reference: DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
No, sorry, doesn't work like that.
Check out Unitarian-Universalism, or, if you must hang on to Jesus as deity, the United Church of Christ.
I prefer catholic churches, and their monolithic command structure. They make you feel shame and guilt.
See http://www.cognitivemedia.co.uk/index.php/blog/2010/07/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce for a quick tour of the issues.....
I see more of the mentally ill on the street every day - and I pray that there are churches willing to help them - and I pray that we as a society have the guts to not tolerate the lack of services they get so that the churches don't have to help except as compassionate friends and neighbors....
However, IF a person is going to be of service to a person with a mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia) good intentions and prayer are not enough. It's not mild case of ennui that we are talking about here.
I know better now. I also know that people still need grace, forgiveness and healing. It just comes from a larger universe - one not bounded by dogma - and is as likely found in an atheist who is a good and caring friend as a pew mate.
I think the larger message for the "Church" as it is understood in Protestant America is starting from a base of compassion and a sense of the mystery that lives in a human being and the essential unknowingness of the wherefore's and why's of those lives. This leaves us all more open to lovingly encountering the "other" - whether that be someone afflicted by a mental illness or drug or sexual addiction.
I wish you well - the tides seem to be flowing the other direction .....