Ngu vision spring 2016 mental health

Mental Health Breaking down the stigmas Alex Miller Shifting in her bed, Sarah peels open her eyelids. The sunbeams shining through the window pierce her sleepy eyes and she groans. She is exhausted: physically, mentally and spiritually. Her body begs for just another hour of rest.

Alas, she rises from the comfort of her inviting bed and shuffles over to the mirror to assess the damage.

The image before her doesn’t surprise her. Darkness surrounds her eyes and her hair sticks out like twigs. She wipes the remnants of crusty build-up from her eyes and then reaches for her pill container. Today is Sunday.

Lifting the appropriate cap, she dumps the multicolored medicine into her hand, slings it into her mouth and washes it down with water from the sink.

Straightening up, her back making small pops from her night of tossing, she stares into her reflection. Disgusting.

“A face only a mother could love,” she says out loud. If even that, she silently wonders.

Heading to church in the drizzly rain, she passes a graveyard. Sitting at the stoplight, she sees a family huddling around a 6-foot-deep hole as the minister holds an open Bible.

A woman grasps a little girl to her side and weeps. Sarah thinks back to the moment when she was 16 years old and stood by a similar hole. Her father had stood by her, resilient, not daring to let a single tear fall. He had always told Sarah to be strong. Tears were for weak people who did not fully trust in God. As she sunk into her cycle of tormenting thoughts, she could feel the tears welling up, creating pressure behind her eyes. She could not let them fall. People in the church would ask questions if she showed up with a runny nose and a red, blotchy face.

Growing up, she was told saving face was the number one priority. If you crumble, at least don’t let others see it. So she stuffed her tears down deep, waiting for the moment when she was back in the safety of her home.

Home was also the place where she sunk deepest into her despair and regrets – regrets about events and mistakes from the past and despair over the person she was now.

Fellow believers had always told her that Christians with a strong relationship with Christ don’t struggle with depression.

They were ignorant of the demons

Mental illness: we all know

someone who is affected by it, but most of us don’t

understand the healthy

approach to dealing with those who 7

suffer.

she constantly wrestled with in the privacy of her mind. She felt ashamed that she read her Bible daily, yet still struggled. It was unacceptable.

After parking outside the church, she walked up the stone steps and quietly sat in the back wooden pew, smiling modestly at those who greeted her.

Today was just another day of hiding and pretending.

Sarah, like 18 percent of the world’s population, suffers from depression, and that is just a description of one morning in her shoes. Like so many, she is shamed for her illness by the one place that should be a sanctuary for her mind: the Church.

Mental illness: we all know someone who is affected by it, but most of us don’t understand the healthy approach to dealing with those who suffer.

The most common approach by the Church is to Band-Aid® the mentally ill with scripture and prayer. Unfortunately, this “Jesus can fix everything” outlook is counterproductive.

When they ramp up their spiritual life and still feel the effects of their illness, they feel even more shame because they’re “failing” spiritually.

The last thing you tell people who hate themselves is there’s one more thing they’re doing wrong.

Steve Bielby, student counselor at North Greenville University, said the Church often ignores the mentally ill because of fear and misunderstanding.

“If it’s outside of your expertise, you can’t just say, ‘The answer for you is Jesus. Here’s a Bible verse for you. Read scripture, pray a lot and stay in church and you’ll be okay,’” said Bielby. “If that person is, say, borderline personality

disorder, that isn’t going to fly. They need a whole lot more.”

A hundred years ago, lack of medical research resulted in the poor treatment of the mentally ill. Then, people had no clue what they were dealing with and the decision to throw someone in an institution was based upon whether or not the public deemed an individual’s behavior as “crazy” or “threatening.”

With the advancement of scientific research, we now have no excuses.

“Now we have a better understanding of people’s behavior and the contributing factors such as chemical imbalance of the brain or environment,” said Bielby.

According to Bielby, Christians often factor in only one cause for illness, leaving the mentally ill searching for a loving hand to reach out and rescue them from their pit.

In 2013, Lifeway Research did a study which showed over half of Christians believe mental illness can be cured by Bible study and prayer alone.

Bielby said, “It’s an approach that leaves out the other dimensions of your being: your physical, your emotional, your social, your psychological and your spiritual. You are all of those things together.”

This type of approach ignores people like Sarah who only get a couple hours of sleep every night, don’t eat a balanced diet and have trauma in their past.

When you ignore all of those factors, you’re left to grasp at straws and the only one left to grab is, “They don’t believe in Jesus.”

There are plenty of godly people in the Bible, however, who displayed symptoms congruent with mental illness.

For example, Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” was severely depressed as he lived in a miserable environment seeking to fulfill God’s will. King Saul was close with the Lord, but was susceptible to mania and depression.

Lastly, there’s the demoniac who was a

“Praise be to...the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that

we can comfort those in any trouble

with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 cutter plagued by psychosis.

All of those people had mental illnesses, and the spiritual aspect was only a small part of the issue.

Bielby described finding the root of people’s illnesses as “peeling back layers of an onion,” and those who rush the process by jumping to quick conclusions and offering petty spiritual advice are only creating more problems.

In regards to suicidal people, he said, “Saying they’re just selfish is selfish.

First, you’re dismissing the factors in their life that made them suicidal and then you’re telling them it’s their fault for feeling that way and they should be ashamed. You’re putting even more of a bind upon them.”

If the Church desires to branch out from the stigmas created by Hollywood and show actual compassion for the mentally ill, it must adopt a holistic approach.

Bielby described counseling as a “holy thing” and an “art.” But you don’t have to have a doctorate to help someone.

The most important thing to remember when dealing with the mentally ill is their humanness. They are image-bearers of God and every single one is unique.

So, there is no cookie cutter approach to addressing mental health.

The b e s t option is to see the person as an individual, broken, and in need of something. That “something” is not our uneducated diagnoses or spiritual judgments, but rather our unrelenting love and pursuit of their well-being, whatever that looks like.

God created us to live in community, which means taking care of each other through struggles and not leaving the weak to fend for themselves.

In 2 Corinthians 1:3-6, Christ calls us to bring comfort to others and to suffer with others, as He suffers with us.

The title of “Christian” does not mean you must have it all together, but that in your suffering you have a body of believers and a compassionate Heavenly Father to turn to for strength and comfort.

Mental health is a lifelong battle for those afflicted. With the unhindered efforts of the Church to lock arms with these victims, we can make their battles a little less uphill.

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