Recovery

The Power of Higher Powers

In 1979, Thelma Gordon made a request that was considered pretty strange back then: She wanted her church to find a way to welcome and support people who suffered from mental illness.

The priest and the nun that led the congregation didn’t know what to do about the woman, who had schizophrenia herself. But Gordon persisted; she kept at them for years. Connie Rakitan, a member of the same church, remembers that “Thelma pestered the nun, and eventually the nun pestered me to do something about her request.”

In many cases, religious beliefs appear to be associated with lower levels of hopelessness and with less depression. Mental health care professionals are acknowledging it’s time they paid attention to matters of their patients’ faith and spirituality, regardless of their own personal beliefs.

Rakitan has gotten to know countless people and their experiences with mental illness over the past 30 years, and says faith is often the only thing left after the onset of severe mental illness. “They are often estranged from their families. They don’t have jobs anymore. Many can’t drive a car anymore. They’ve lost so much.”

Traditionally, medicine hasn’t accepted or understood nonscientific solutions to problems it considers biological. Not only has the medical community failed to embrace the faith community as a partner in caring for the mentally ill, the feeling has been mutual.

When Chris Summerville was a teenager, he struggled with severe clinical depression that persisted throughout his adult life, often resulting in suicidal ideation. As a Christian, this caused him tremendous guilt. He thought he shouldn’t be experiencing such despair if he prayed hard enough. Summerville became an evangelical pastor at age 17 and continued that vocation for the next 25 years. In his last year as a pastor, he “came out of the closet” about his depression during a sermon.

“It was very awkward for the congregation,” he recalls. “Even though they were very loving, they were shocked that their spiritual leader would have existential despair.” That experience, says Summerville, was one reason he resigned as pastor in 1994.

Medication, says Summerville, accounts for 20 percent of the recovery experience. Eighty percent has to do with “personal medicine”—being at one with nature and creation, as well as spirituality. With personal medicine added to the mix, “consumers tell us they not only cope, but thrive in spite of bipolar [disorder] or schizophrenia.”

Given the past turbulent relations between mental illness and religion, current objections are not surprising. Historically, behaviors caused by epilepsy or schizophrenia led to the belief that the affected individual was not ill but possessed by demons that had to be “cast out.” Some Pentecostal Christians still hold that belief today, and the Church of Scientology has published documents claiming there is no such thing as “mental illness,” and that psychiatry is a fraud.

With so many obstacles, why do people withmental illness continue to ask their caregivers to address matters of faith? “It’s about finding strength for the journey,” says Summerville. “Just because things are hellish today doesn’t mean they will be hellish tomorrow. It’s the concept of hope, the expectation that I can get better and live beyond the devastation, learn how to manage my illness, have strength, and that I’m a person of worth and significance no matter what. I think the recovery model lends itself up for people to open themselves up to a higher power—God—whatever you want to call it. In 1979, Thelma Gordon made a request that was considered pretty strange back then: She wanted her church to find a way to welcome and... more

singrrr

added this