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The Church and Mental Illness

The Church and Mental Illness

Tag Archives: mental illness

The Normal Stress of Self-Concealment

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Carlene Hill Byron in authentic community, discrimination, employment, mental health, mental illness, stigma, stigma, success

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disability, discrimination, mental health, mental illness, stigma

06304 Venetian Carnival Masquerade Full Face Mask Volto Lusso Marlene

Most people with mental health diagnoses live “behind a mask” of whatever their community calls “normalcy.”

Last year, I interviewed for a 20-hour job at a mental health nonprofit. The part-time, benefit-free position offered a paycheck comparable to what a hospital in the same city paid its switchboard operators, but since everyone seems to consider me overqualified to run a switchboard, I keep applying for more challenging positions in line with my experience.

I made it to the second interview and found the team quite concerned that I might not offer a 24/7 supporting role to their organization.

I’ve worked before in organizations where my paycheck was expected to buy round-the-clock engagement: news media, which were expected to be politically “impartial” back in the day, and a large engineering company, which was so often the presenting consultant at local meetings that I could not participate as a citizen in public hearings. In the case of the engineering firm, the paycheck was big enough to buy almost anything; in the case of the news operation, the honor of the profession (at that time) allowed me to walk proud even under constraints on my citizenship.

But the idea that I should never express a view about mental illness different from that of my part-time employer in exchange for less than $15,000 a year — I found that staggering. I didn’t think it would be a problem to present their program to potential funders, but it would definitely be a problem to limit myself to their perspectives during the remaining 7,696 hours per year. Especially since I didn’t even live in the community where they provided services.

A board member suggested that the concern was not just for the organization but for me:  Wouldn’t I find it stressful to present a view that is not fully representative of my own opinions, he wanted to know.

I’m not sure, but I think I was hearing him express a kind of concern that people don’t express toward professionals without diagnoses.  Would he ask a “normal” if they would find it “stressful” to self-conceal or would he assume that self-concealment is normative? According to Tom Corley’s Rich Habits blog, 94% of wealthy people (like the board member) avoid just “saying what’s on their mind” while more than two-thirds of the poor will let ‘er rip. Was he making a judgment based on my openness during the interview or on my diagnosis, about which I was straightforward, since this was a mental health nonprofit.

And I also had to ask myself: Does this board member have a clue about what it is like to live with a mental health diagnosis? Because the “stress” of self-concealment is part of everyday life in a world where letting a diagnosis be known subjects you to all kinds of discrimination. For example:

Job applications: Who else has faced the OMB-CC-305 “Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability” in a job application?  If you are uncertain whether you have a disability, the form defines “disability” for you:

a physical or mental impairment or medical condition that substantially limits a major life activity, or if you have a history or record of such an impairment or medical condition

Of the listed “disabilities,” 28% are psychiatric diagnoses, including depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. So if you have “a history or record of such … medical condition,” the OMB considers you disabled for purposes of federal contracting.

To get a sense of just how silly this definition is, the National Institutes of Health find that in just one year, more than 1 out of 6 adults in the U.S. experiences some form of mental illness. So if everyone with a history of one of the listed diagnoses checked the “yes” box, employers would be absolutely flooded with “disabled” applicants.

Still, how likely do you think you are to get a job if you check “Yes, I have a disability” or “I don’t wish to answer”? Feels risky, doesn’t it? You want to self-conceal. You check, “No, I don’t have a disability,” no matter how challenged you may feel at times.

Automobile license renewal: I don’t know how it is where you live, but in North Carolina where I recently lived, the DMV asks as part of the license renewal process whether you have a mental illness. Imagine my shock when, after I had just walked the DMV clerk through the details of my change of address, she starts reciting a sing-song litany of conditions that could separate me from my driving privileges … including mental illness.

I won’t question that keeping oneself under wraps can be an intense psychic demand. At the same time, I want to remind people — especially those who think they spend their lives “fighting the stigma of mental illness” — that most of us with diagnoses do wear masks every day. If we take our mask off in front of you, don’t use our openness as grounds for discrimination against us. As long as mental health organizations readily discriminate against people with diagnoses, the biggest problem we have with “stigma” is our own.

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Can the Church Afford ‘Normal’?

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Carlene Hill Byron in christianity, church, community, disability, discrimination, faith, mental illness, recovery, Uncategorized

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body of christ, ephesians 2, martin luther king quote, mental illness, pat keegan, recovery, schizophrenia

Pat Deegan encourages others with mental health diagnoses to become the unique person they are, instead of trying to be "normal."

Pat Deegan encourages others with mental health diagnoses to become the unique people they are, instead of trying to be “normal.”

Pat Deegan, who has schizophrenia, owns a mental health consulting firm and teaches at Dartmouth medical school. She recently blogged about “being normal.”

For us of faith, the crux comes when she describes what “recovery” from a “mental illness” should look like:

… recovery is not about becoming normal. The goal of recovery is to become the precious gift that we were born to become. …The goal of our recovery is to become the unique, never-to-be repeated gift that we are. Continue reading →

Thank God for Mental Illness? That’s Crazy!

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Carlene Hill Byron in church, diagnosis, disability, God, Love, medication, medicine, mental illness, symptoms, Uncategorized

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bill bright, campus crusade, crazy, cru, kay arthur, mental illness, psychosis, thank god

I was in a Sunday school class where I was taught that the right answer to difficult circumstances was to thank God for them. The specific example from the Kay Arthur text, which drew on Bill Bright’s experience in Campus Crusade (now known as Cru), was a girl depressed after her fiance died in a car crash. According to Bright, her depression vanished as soon as she learned to thank God for the car crash and her fiance’s death.

That  sounds a bit crazy to me. Also a bit off the mark. I respect God’s power, but I’m not sure I’m ready to blame God for creating evil, much less thank God for doing it. That feels to me like the worst kind of taking God’s name in vain.

What the instructor had no way of knowing was that I was sitting in the class suffering the side effects of a medication that was clearly the wrong medication for me. It was causing me to believe that God was evil and that the Bible was just a pack of lies God had given us trying to convince us God was other than God actually is.

If I believed the instructor’s guidance, my meds-induced psychosis would have lifted as soon as I thanked God for being psychotic.

Seriously??

Besides, I couldn’t possibly thank a God that (buried somewhere deep in more than 20 prior years of Christian living) I knew was good for putting me in (what I desperately hoped was) a temporary meds-induced state where I was entirely convinced God was evil. Why would God want me to believe that God is evil? This was evil itself at work. To thank God for it would be the most horrible form of taking God’s name in vain.

Happily, God never suggests we do such a thing. God urges us to remain thankful for whatever good we can see and find during trying times. Sometimes, that good may seem quite small. So we say:

  • Thank you, God, for making it possible for me to put one foot in front of another again today.
  • Thank you, God, for the blue heron I can see fishing in the lake right now.
  • Thank you, God, for an apartment I can afford.
  • Thank you, God, for extra hours (=extra money) this week.
  • Thank you, God, for a (new) pastor at my (new) church who notices that I’m not there on Sunday and actually calls!
  • Thank you, God, for a $12.99 job interview dress that matches accessories I already own.
  • Thank you, God, for phone calls from friends.

But never “Thank you, God, for the sin and failures and disaster that has made such huge and difficult changes in my life.” Just thank you that God, being God, is able to take sin and disaster — which God neither authors nor approves — and work them together for good on the path I’m walking because I am among those who are called according to God’s purposes.

God is good and God is with us. When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us. Even when it is difficult to see God along the path we are walking, God is present in all of the good we encounter and God does not abandon us in all of the evil we encounter.

So should we thank God for mental illness? If you think you should thank God for cancer or kidney failure or a blown rotator cuff, then I’d say sure.

But if you think you should only thank God for being present in love and care when you suffer, and teaching you lessons you might not have learned without suffering … then I’d say it’s not the illness for which you are grateful. It’s God.

And God deserves the glory.

Did Robin Williams Have to Die?

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Carlene Hill Byron in diagnosis, medication, medicine, mental illness, pharma, suicide

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bipolar disorder, mental illness, Robin Williams, suicide

Robin Williams

Robin Williams in his last role as Teddy Roosevelt

I suspect I wasn’t the only person who teared up when the Teddy Roosevelt statue came to life in the last “Night at the Museum” film.

Critics said the late Robin Williams turned the rough-riding president into an on-screen “father figure” for the rowdy crew of cave men, dinosaurs, cowboys, and gladiators who rode rough through the series of crazy comedy films. The role was Williams’ last; he committed suicide by hanging in his home on August 11 last year.

Williams “neither confirmed nor denied” having bipolar disorder. I can’t imagine that anyone who knows bipolar was uncertain that Robin Williams depended on bipolar for the verbal velocity that fueled his comedy. Continue reading →

‘He’s Mentally Ill BUT He’s Very Successful …’

21 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by Carlene Hill Byron in achievement, mental health, mental illness, stigma, success

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mental health, mental illness, stigma

Earlier today, I was at a meeting where the team planning a mental health conference excitedly reported that one of the speakers was bringing his son to the event. “He has bipolar but he’s very successful professionally,” the conference team member said of the younger man. Did that raise your hackles, too? Let’s try a few similar sentences and see how well they work: “She uses a wheelchair BUT she’s a really good graphic designer.” “He has Lyme disease BUT he’s an excellent father.” Continue reading →

The Church’s Role in Suicide Prevention

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by Carlene Hill Byron in authentic community, church, community, mental health, mental illness, suicide, suicide prevention

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Anthony Pisani, authentic community, church, hiv/aids, homicide, lgbqt, madd, mental health, mental illness, mothers against drunk driving, suicide, suicide prevention, Thomas Joiner, violent crime

We face a mental health crisis today in a suicide rate that is among the 10 top causes of death nationwide — as high as top 3 for some age groups. Suicide kills more people than auto accidents, HIV/AIDS, or homicide. Suicide is killing bullied children, military veterans, and our older men deprived of meaningful work.

Among the reasons that the death rates are now relatively lower for auto accidents, HIV/AIDS, and homicide are hard work we have done, as citizens, as civic organizations, as government agencies, and as businesses.  Continue reading →

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Friday April 10 Conference in NC

Faith Connections on Mental Illness hosts its annual Conference 8-4:30 in Chapel Hill with keynote Amy Simpson. For info: http://www.faithconnectionsonmentalillness.org/annual-conference.html

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