The Remedy: It’s All In Your Head
Featured, The Remedy — By Sarah Thebarge on April 5, 2010 at 12:00 pmIn 1692, three adolescent girls who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony began acting strangely. They had inexplicable episodes of screaming, twitching, babbling incoherently and even convulsing.
When they were asked by the town elders to account for their unusual behavior, the frightened girls identified three eccentric women in their community as witches who had cast a spell on them. And with these accusations, the Salem Witch Trials were born.
From 1692-1693, two hundred people were accused of witchcraft and 20 people were executed for their supposed crimes.
In the centuries that followed, these events have been deconstructed by historians and medical experts who have postulated theories about what led to the hysteria about witches, and about what caused the girls’ unusual symptoms.
Many experts point to the Puritanical focus on, and fear of, the devil as one of the largest contributors to the hysteria and hangings that ensued. Also, since their faith centered on invisible principles of faith, a divine deity, heaven and hell, they were quick to assign supernatural qualities to the phenomenon of the girls’ behavior that they could not understand or explain.
Theories have also been postulated to explain the girls’ abnormal behavior. Some historians and medical experts believe the girls may have ingested ergot, a poison produced by a fungus that infects grain supplies.
Others have suggested that the girls were suffering from a hereditary neuromuscular disorder called Huntington’s Chorea, which causes uncoordinated, involuntary muscle spasms. This theory is supported by the fact that there
seems to have been a disproportionately high concentration of the genetic disease in the areas in Europe the Puritans emigrated from.
The lessons the witch trials taught us are 1) perseverating on invisible evil forces can lead to a dangerous level of suspicion and hysteria and 2) just because you can’t see the cause of a phenomenon does not mean it necessarily has a spiritual explanation.
You would think that more than 300 years later, we would have learned those lessons. But when you look at the way conservative circles treat mental illness, we haven’t come as far as you might think.
There are Christians who purport that mental illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia all have a spiritual cause and thus a spiritual, not medical, treatment. There are some who go so far as to say that people who are schizophrenic are actually demon-possessed.
I met one of these people recently and an interesting conversation ensued. He told me his theory that schizophrenics were demon-possessed, and I said, “That’s interesting. What about Parkinson’s patients? Are they demon-possessed, too?”
“Of course not,” he said. “That’s a real medical problem.”
But his opinion is problematic because the same neurotransmitter is responsible for both schizophrenia and Parkinson’s Disease – in schizophrenia there’s too much dopamine, and in Parkinson’s, there’s too little. In fact, if you give Parkinson’s patients too much medicine, they’ll develop schizophrenic symptoms. And if you give schizophrenics too much of their medicine, they’ll develop Parkinsonian symptoms.
There is a demonstrable connection between neurotransmitters and mental illness, but for some reason many in the church have drawn an arbitrary line in ignorance, deciding that anything that goes wrong from the neck up is spiritual, but anything that manifests itself from the neck down is physical.
This dichotomy is not only unsupported; it’s dangerous. It creates a stigma around mental illness so that many people who would benefit from pharmacologic therapy are reluctant to pursue it because they don’t want to be judged for their perceived weakness.
It leads people who are responding well to their medications to try to go off of them because they’re told that if they just have enough faith or confess enough sin or pray hard enough, their mental illness will be healed. Needless to say, this can lead to drastic consequences.
It also leads the secular world to think of the Church in the same way we think of the Salem witch hunters: paranoid and ignorant.
This isn’t to say that mental illness is always correctly diagnosed. There are many children diagnosed with ADHD whose only problem is a lack of discipline. There are people who resort to anti-depressants because they lack the coping skills to deal with life’s difficulties, not because they have a chemical imbalance in their brain. There are people who become psychotic from abusing illicit substances, not from an organic process.
But just because something is over-diagnosed doesn’t mean that some people don’t have a real medical condition that warrants adequate treatment.
Maybe the faith evangelical Christians need is not the faith to ignore treatment options for real conditions, but the faith to believe that organic mental illness exists even though it is invisible to the naked eye.
This is the definition of faith, after all – believing in what is invisible, being certain of what we cannot see.
24 Comments
I only have two problems with this post:
1. I’ve grown up in conservative churches, and 99% of the time, I see people open to the idea that any mental illness has a physiological root cause, and there is hope for a medical cure. Casting conservatives as a group in the light you are casting them here sounds to me, ironically, like a witch hunt.
2. I’ll save the second one for later.
Not every conservative Christian/church espouses the view that mental illness is spiritually based, but most of the Christians/churches which do so are conservative.
I grew up in conservative churches as well, and know several individuals who strongly believe that most mental illness is spiritually based rather than physically. A fellow youth group member was prayed for repeatedly because of her bipolar disorder. She later got the treatment she needed, but the assumption that she was spiritually ill left an impression on her, for sure.
I think the people we need to be defensive about are those affected by the mistaken views rather than whatever church/people it is who perpetuate them.
“Not every conservative Christian/church espouses the view that mental illness is spiritually based, but most of the Christians/churches which do so are conservative. ”
So what if someone showed a stat that most people who cause car crashes are female? You want to assume all women are bad drivers?
The logic displayed here is tremendously biased, judgmental, and–dare I say it–fundamentalist.
Hi James. I’m not a liberal, and by that I mean I do not espouse secular socialism or revisionist Gospel; rather, I am more a libertarian, politically, and a conservative, Biblically, though not fundamentalist in the way the word is most often meant. As such I can see as well that it seems most of the articles posted on Burnside (from my experience) do seem as though they are from a liberal bent, and it is surely wrongheaded of some of these writers to, as some of them do indeed, summarize conservatives by the most radical, or the least educated of them. Although it would not be surprising to find that it is more likely that a conservative Christian than a liberal Christian would be open to the possibility (and perhaps even eager about it) that someone mentally-ill is demon possessed or in some manner spiritually disadvantaged. Then again, “Jesse D”‘s comment below on the Charismatics is an interesting suggestion, as well. Thank you for bringing the issue of mischaracterization into discussion; it is an extraordinarily noteworthy tangent for the church: not to be dismissed or derided. If we want to be loving we must take care to make a sincere effort to understand each other enough that we do not falsely accuse another of evil.
I don’t know of any “liberal” Christian groups who point to spiritual problems as the primary cause of mental illness. I have never heard of friends who went to less conservative churches who had the experience my friend had when we were in high school. The examples may very well be there, but it seems they would be the exception rather than the rule.
Arguing about how mistaken it is or isn’t to assume that conservative churches would house the most people with this mindset really misses the point, however. The point doesn’t seem to be “KILL THE CONSERVATIVES” so much as “take care of people around you who have mental illness, and encourage a scientifically-minded perspective on the issue to those around you.” You can choose to come to the defense of conservative churches everywhere, but I’m not sure that’s the most effective use of energy in this case.
Suit yourself. I’m a big fan of truth, myself, and some truth is blatantly expressed, while other times it’s more implied. The way Sarah words it leads to an implication that conservatives churches are the thing. If someone were to post that most people in prison are black (a stat I just made up; I have no idea if it’s true or not), and said something along the lines of “many black men commit crimes”, the prejudice in that statement would be evident to everyone. But since it’s still acceptable to make blanket statements against some groups, nobody is supposed to object when the subject is conservatives, whether politically or theologically conservative.
In other words, I wish Sarah hadn’t said “But when you look at the way conservative circles treat mental illness”. If she had substituted the word “some” for “conservative”, then I would have kept my mouth shut. So my question for Sarah is: why’d you have to say it like that?
If this had been the first time you’d nit-picked an article and taken offense at a sentence or two rather than comment on the article as it pertains to your own personal relationship with Christ or with other people, your statement about your commitment to “truth” would hold a lot more weight.
What you consider “truth” is most often “favoring the traditional, conservative Christian viewpoints,” as far as I can tell. You can choose to find offense, but I don’t think that we’re meant to nit-pick over points like this when there are bigger issues at hand.
Have you known people whose mental illness was ignored? You say 99% of the time, the people you’ve known in conservative churches have been in favor of people receiving medical interventions in cases of brain function disorders. What about that 1%? I didn’t speak out as strongly as I could have when it was my friend being mistreated. She could have used someone committed to truth at that moment and I hope you apply your truth-seeking in times like that as well.
As you say, suit yourself.
What you consider “truth” is most often “favoring the traditional, conservative Christian viewpoints,” as far as I can tell.
==============
I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t attempt to read my mind. read what I said, not what you think I said. Sarah’s choice to say “But when you look at the way conservative circles treat mental illness” is the only thing I took issue with, but it’s big enough to not be considered a nitpick. More important, it’s a completely unnecessary choice of words. It does no good except to take a swipe at an entire group of people, most of whom don’t have it coming.
On a different note, and closer to the actual point of the article, you ask if I have known anyone who has been mentally ill and been ignored. No I haven’t, but I don’t think she was talking about people being ignored. I read it to mean that she was talking about people who have been mentally ill and the church failing them, not by ignoring them, but by assuming there must be a spiritual, not physiological, cause for their condition. And yes, I have known people in that situation.
I’m a student at a conservative seminary, working on a masters in Christian education with a minor in counseling. As part of the counseling curriculum, we were presented with several viewpoints regarding the physiological and/or spiritual causes of mental illness, and their treatment. People who were given medicine only were cured about 66% of the time, as were people who were given spiritual counseling but not medicine (contrary to what the article seems to suggest). Yet those who received both medicine and spiritual care were cured about 96% of the time.
The counseling staff took some flak from the pastoral side of the seminary for being too “integrationist,” and I did know a few people who believe that every single mental illness is the result of unconfessed sin, but it’s so rare that I honestly don’t think it warrants an article on BWC.
I like this idea of integrated, holistic treatment. Yeah.
I do wonder if this article was more true 20, 30 years ago. It definitely reflects some attitudes found in the church I grew up with. I think some of the antipathy was created by not wanting to endorse Freud, et al.
As a counseling student at an Assemblies of God seminary, I can tell you that the belief that mental illness always has spiritual roots is still pervasive in some church circles today, even among the educated.
James W – You’re right that most conservative Christians don’t act this way and that Sarah’s language is a bit sweeping. When I read an article on this sight making statements about “conservative Christianity”, I have a tendency to assume that it’s a person from inside that movement critiquing it (maybe I’m projecting that on the authors). My guess is that when you read statements here about “conservative Christianity” you assume that it’s coming from the perspective of “liberal Christianity”. Would you have been bothered by the overstatement if a conservative christian leader had written this post?
Yes, I would have been equally bothered.
I, too, would have been equally bothered. The way this stereotype is used does more to shut down communication and unity than it does to help.
I also grew up in conservative Christianity, and have to agree with James that I rarely saw what the article is talking about.
I’m curious though, would you (Sarah) have a problem with people praying over someone with a mental health issue for healing? Not encouraging or discouraging any medicinal treatments, but realizing that God, as the Creator of all things organic, has a pretty firm hold on organic health problems too – whether mental or physical. There doesn’t have to be forces of evil involved for God to step in and heal supernaturally.
My first inclination is to pray – I don’t think we should be irresponsible with our bodies – but it seems to me there’s a larger trend of people leaving more room for medication then they are for the Holy Spirit.
Clara,
That’s a great question.
I absolutely pray for people who are diagnosed with both physical and mental illnesses, but in neither case would I advocate prayer instead of treatment. I wouldn’t ask a bipolar or schizophrenic to refrain from pharmacologic treatment while the church prayed for them any more than I’d ask a cancer patient to hold off on their chemo.
While God is more than able to miraculously heal, the reality is that most of the time, He doesn’t choose to do that in this world, and treatment of diseases is a common grace that improves, and sometimes saves, lives.
I’m with JamesW on this one: I attend, and have attended, “conservative” churches all my life, and while I’ve run into the idea, I’d certainly not characterize conservative Christianity, or even conservative circles, as having a dominant attitude of mental illness being spiritual. I’d wager that, rather than this being a “conservative” thing, it’s probably something you’ll encounter in more charismatic denominations who have a greater tendency to spiritualize elements of everyday existence and promote spiritual healing over medical healing. (Not to make a blanket statement about charismatics, but it’s within that movement that people like Benny Hinn and other faith healers seem to thrive.)
And secondly, it’s not a far stretch of the imagination, or even of what we know to be true in the Bible, to say that schizophrenia and other mental illnesses have a spiritual element to them. Many disorders, schizophrenia being among the worst, tear down the individual and their spirit, convincing the person of their worthlessness and reinforcing negative attitudes about themselves and others. How is this dissimilar from an attack by Satan? Even if there’s a physical cause for these disorders, they certainly seem to go hand in hand with the agenda of Satan – to attack and deface the image of God.
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2003 after having been hospitalized while studying abroad in France for a psychotic manic episode. Upon my return, I still did not completely accept the idea that I was mentally ill. Furthermore, my hallucinations had been of the religious persuasion and I read a book by a Christian author who claimed most people who were diagnosed with mental illness suffered from demonic oppression. Needless to say, this did not help in my recovery. I’m glad, though, this attitude is finally beginning to change in the church. Thanks for posting this!
Glad you are getting the help you need.
Wow, controversial much? Still Applicable? Yes! I applaud your forward facing attitude, and ability to stay on-top of the issue. Controversy, it seems, has many distracting side routes. (Speaking in reference to a few of the preceding comments) However, It remains to be a good discussion for a well written article.
I remember hearing something on the news about an infant that had passed away due to the fact that the churches beliefs did not warrant hospital visits. The parents (and church) remained faithful through the toughest of times, but the baby could have lived if only taken to the hospital. For myself this sparks a huge internal conflict between my spiritual and scientific beliefs.
Is there a standard approach to this? Do we put our faith first in God, and then in humanity, or the other way around?
I’m glad you mentioned the part about over-diagnosis. That it may happen, but that doesn’t reduce the realities of mental illness sufferers.
I seem to hear much about ADHD and depression being treated in just about anyone, that people with chronic problems or more-than-situational problems are too easily brushed aside as “hyper-medicated.”
This was a huge problem in the conservative churches in which I was raised, and I saw multiple examples that adversely impacted people that I knew.
That particular experiences seems to not match the experience of most of the people commenting here – for those of you who haven’t had experiences like mine in your church, I envy you. It’s good to know that there are conservative churches in other areas of the country that have more coherent views than the ones with which I’ve had personal experiences. (Although, given that I’m from the deep south, this may not be much of a surprise to anybody.)
Still, I’m a bit surprised by such a vehement reaction to a perceived slight against conservative evangelicalism. I’m glad it’s not a problem where most of you are from, but trust me: it’s still a very real problem here.
I find that across the board, that a stigma does remain for people who struggle with mental illness. As the wife of a pastor I repressed my need for help for over a decade. I frequently heard comments like, if you were closer to God you would not be feeling this way. If only you were praying more, you would be relieved from this. My obsessive compulsive disorder was pulling me deeper and deeper into depression and anxiety. I felt the constant pressure to maintain a perfect facade as a helpmate to my husband. In reality, I could not even feel God in the haze of my mind. When I finally received help through medication and counseling my whole world changed. I saw colors more vividly, God was most surely still there. He loved me and was not ashamed of me.
Though I wished to keep it secret. Almost immediately I felt compelled to share my story. I share this comment now that perhaps this does not always happen, but there is a pervading sense in the church that “broken things” are due to a spiritual limitation. I think this does hold people in shame and keep them from getting the help they desperately need.