How I got involved in emotional illnesses
The stigma
As I was growing up in the church, emotional or mental disorders in members were always spoken of in hushed whispers. It is understandable that any personal medical problem is confidential and should be spoken of with great sensitivity but there was another message communicated by the hushed whisper. The unspoken message was that emotional illness was a sign of spiritual and personal weakness and that strong Christians really shouldn't suffer from these conditions. In recent years I have even heard a denominational leader state that "No Christian of good character will ever suffer from depression." Another pastor and leader stated to me that "If there was more repentance we could empty the mental hospitals."
These careless statements by leaders cause so much unnecessary suffering in Christians. These men are basically saying that emotional illness is the fault of the victim and that they should be able to get out of it themselves. This very damaging opinion is widespread in Christianity and has heaped condemnation and shame upon the most emotionally vulnerable in the body of Christ.
The church has unintentionally put condemnation
and shame on depressed people
There are many who blame all emotional illness on willful sin or the activity of demons. There is no doubt as we will see later, that sin and demons play a role, but not all emotional disturbances can be blamed on spiritual causes.
Emotionally Free
Have your own Christian guide to emotional health!
Have your own Christian guide to emotional health!
This attitude, that emotional illness was not an acceptable part of being a Christian, even made me suspect that a true Christian could never become a psychiatrist. I just presumed that if Christians weren't supposed to get this problem then there would be no need for a Christian to treat the problem. I had also picked up in the church the impression that psychiatrists were anti-Christian and would try to destroy your faith. So how could a Christian study to become a person who blames faith for emotional illness and then tries to remove faith as part of the treatment. This was so ingrained in my thinking that even as a junior medical student I was stunned to find out that there were Christian psychiatrists who not only incorporated Christian values in their treatments, but were willing to come to my University's Christian Student Association and explain their work to us.
How I got involved in emotional illnesses
As I mentioned earlier, when I started practice I did family medicine and anesthesia. I was totally untrained and unprepared to deal with the large number of people suffering with emotional illnesses that came to my office so I referred them to psychiatrists as I had been taught to do. Some returned much improved on a new medicine but others were totally defeated, feeling that their faith had failed them and they were condemned to a life of psychiatric treatment. I saw so much emotional suffering in my patients, including Christians, that I began to ask God how could this many sincere well meaning Christians have such emotional pain.
During this time when my interest in emotional illness was beginning to awaken, God arranged for me to be given a book by Dr. John White entitled "The Masks of Melancholy." Here was a practicing Canadian psychiatrist who at the same time pastored an evangelical church! This to me was the ultimate paradox. How could two opposite positions exist in the same man? He was a very respected Christian author and yet he was a psychiatrist.
In his book, Dr. White explained how medical, spiritual and emotional issues all intertwined to cause emotional illness. When I completed this book it was like the lights went on in my mind and I began to understand the role of medical and spiritual treatments. At last I understood how to determine who could be helped by medications. For several years I used the book as required reading for any patient who wanted to see me about their depression.
Soon after this event I began to prescribe psychiatric medicines to people meeting the criteria I learned in the book. I thought it would be worth a try while they were waiting the many months before being able to see a psychiatrist. To my absolute astonishment (which I of course never let on to the patients) many began to improve. In my eagerness and disbelief, I questioned each of them very carefully as to what had changed in their mood, in what sequence and at what dose of medication. As a result of this process of treatment and inquiry I learned how to recognize and treat mood disorders. Word soon got around the Christian community that depressed believers were recovering at my clinic without any loss of faith. My mood disorders clinic was born.
Within a few years of my entry into the field of psychiatry and more particularly, the treatment of Christians, I became aware that pastors and Christian counselors were as confused as I had been about the role of medical psychiatry in Christian emotional illness. I began to hear reports of pastors resigning from ministry due to overwhelming discouragement. They clearly had become depressed and rather than go for treatment, which they still considered as unbecoming a Christian, they left the ministry in total burnout.
I was also hearing of pastors who resigned out of the complete frustration of not being able to effectively help the endless number of people coming to them for counseling. So many of their parishioners were not improving after receiving the pastors' advice. The pastors assumed that their "anointing" or "calling" had lifted or that God was not as powerful as they had thought so there was no longer any point in continuing in ministry.
I felt so sorry for these pastors that I began doing seminars and even wrote a booklet (Moods) on how pastors, counselors and Christians in general could easily diagnose a mood disorder and help a depressed person get medical treatment. With the use of this information, a pastor or counselor could quickly recognize the symptoms of medical illness and refer them for treatment rather than become engulfed and discouraged by endless discussions with a person they can't help.
Next issue we will look at the similarities between blurred vision and blurred thinking.
This article is excerpted from "Emotionally Free" by Dr. Grant Mullen
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