Hi everyone,
This is my first visit to the forum and Im so relieved to have found it. After years of 'applying the brakes' on my topsy turvy personality I found the courage to go and see my Doctor about it as I cant control it anymore. Just before Christmas I was stealing from my local grocery store at a manic rate and knew that something had to give. I am on sleeping tablets at the moment because it takes me hours to get to sleep. I have been fighting the emotional ups and downs of a mental and emotional roller coaster for years, not knowing it had a name, let alone a treatment.
I went to see the Mental Health nurse a few weeks ago and had a long chat with her and she has referred me to a Psychiatrist who I am going to see Feb 20th.
There is no diagnosis as yet but I am sure that I am Bipolar. I find that there seems to be a major conflict between Christians and Psychiatry. Does anyone else see this? If you have a physical illness, you seem to get more sympathy and support but if you mention anything mental, people assume its because you I either possessed by demons or you cant possibly be depressed because you are saved!! Christians can be confused and frightened about seeking psychiatric help, and at times, the church can add to people’s misery by ascribing their depressive illness to ‘deep rooted sin’ or a ‘spirit of depression'. I
It is perhaps not surprising that churches (speaking in broad generalizations of course) tend to still have trouble with conditions of a decidedly psychological or psychiatric nature. They don't know how to respond to someone who has suffered a nervous breakdown, who battles depression or commits suicide and far too often they respond by ignoring or rejecting that person and even his or her family. Ive witnessed many Christians incapable of seeing a mental illness as anything beyond spiritual weakness. A moral-existential approach cannot fully address the medical factors involved in disorders that we now acknowledge to have a solid neuro-biological basis. It has saddened me to sit through sermons where there has been the implication of shame or sin attached to either being ill or seeking treatment or, most painfully and tragically, to a life that has ended in suicide. It almost seems that mental illness challenges the comforting notion that the mind is somehow inseparable from the soul. If the mind is sick then surely the soul is too?
I am wise enough to know that there are some psychiatric treatments and therapies that are not consistent with Christianity and the teachings of the Bible and I will be praying and asking God for his wisdom and guidance.
God bless you all and look forward to sharing my journey with you all.
Sarah (from England)
This is my first visit to the forum and Im so relieved to have found it. After years of 'applying the brakes' on my topsy turvy personality I found the courage to go and see my Doctor about it as I cant control it anymore. Just before Christmas I was stealing from my local grocery store at a manic rate and knew that something had to give. I am on sleeping tablets at the moment because it takes me hours to get to sleep. I have been fighting the emotional ups and downs of a mental and emotional roller coaster for years, not knowing it had a name, let alone a treatment.
I went to see the Mental Health nurse a few weeks ago and had a long chat with her and she has referred me to a Psychiatrist who I am going to see Feb 20th.
There is no diagnosis as yet but I am sure that I am Bipolar. I find that there seems to be a major conflict between Christians and Psychiatry. Does anyone else see this? If you have a physical illness, you seem to get more sympathy and support but if you mention anything mental, people assume its because you I either possessed by demons or you cant possibly be depressed because you are saved!! Christians can be confused and frightened about seeking psychiatric help, and at times, the church can add to people’s misery by ascribing their depressive illness to ‘deep rooted sin’ or a ‘spirit of depression'. I
It is perhaps not surprising that churches (speaking in broad generalizations of course) tend to still have trouble with conditions of a decidedly psychological or psychiatric nature. They don't know how to respond to someone who has suffered a nervous breakdown, who battles depression or commits suicide and far too often they respond by ignoring or rejecting that person and even his or her family. Ive witnessed many Christians incapable of seeing a mental illness as anything beyond spiritual weakness. A moral-existential approach cannot fully address the medical factors involved in disorders that we now acknowledge to have a solid neuro-biological basis. It has saddened me to sit through sermons where there has been the implication of shame or sin attached to either being ill or seeking treatment or, most painfully and tragically, to a life that has ended in suicide. It almost seems that mental illness challenges the comforting notion that the mind is somehow inseparable from the soul. If the mind is sick then surely the soul is too?
I am wise enough to know that there are some psychiatric treatments and therapies that are not consistent with Christianity and the teachings of the Bible and I will be praying and asking God for his wisdom and guidance.
God bless you all and look forward to sharing my journey with you all.
Sarah (from England)
One can only hope that such ignorance will become less prevalent over time as decades of ignorance and stigma w.r.t. mental illness are slowly lifted (at least this is what is happening in Australia).
s and 
