I too had the same questions as you. I found this great book, I don’t know if you have ever heard of it, but it has shed a lot of light on the relationship between you, God, and mental illness. The book is called, Darkness is my Only Companion, by Kathryn Greene-McCreight. Not only does it help you understand, but when you give it to your loved ones to read, they too begin to understand it, even if it’s just a little. You may have your own opinion after you read it, but I wanted to help extend a resource that you might be able to use. I will pray for you.

I went to a church after being athiest for years. I accepeted Christ May 4, 2005. I was trucking along pretty good but then I kept hearing I was demon possessed. It really turned me off. I was working with someone who wanted to be a “Christian Councler” as was told by that person they couldn’t be around depressed people. I was in more trouble than we knew. My brain was shutting down my body from grief of a shooting I experienced a few months prior. I was also told by a “Christian” at the time of the shooting “Good ridiance” because the shooter and victim of the shooting was my abusive ex (the father of my daughter). That was almost 5 years ago.

I still to this day question the bibical teachings I have received. I question the way I was taught to read and interpert the Bible. I asked my therapist just yesterday “why is it they have Bibical teachings like ‘Celebrate Recovery”, “Higher power for AA/NA with studies” but there is absoutely nothing for those with mental illness when the illness causes spiritiual conflicts and how to combat that without hearing it is demons?”

I would love to see more on this topic from a Bibical stand point of how even the mentally ill are children of God. How God did not give us mental illness as a curse for being a sinner or a bad child! How even in the worst episodes of our illness God is right there loving us, holding us, supporting us, and receiving us when even our churches turn their backs on us. I have stopped going to church, bible study and small groups because people could not get past my mental illness which I refuse to hide. I chose not to hide it because when I do it is worse. What is the scripture. Do things in the light. I am an open book. I should not be treated as if I am going to have a demon leap out of me and into your life when I have a disorder that medications treat just as it would diabieties. If diabieties and cancer are not demons then why is mental illness so questioned and debated as to if it is demon possission or not? Are they not basically the same thing and both treated by medications?

Out of necessity, I’ve had to move on to Plan B, that is: get information, so at least I know what I’m up against. I’ve borrowed many a book from the library on Bipolar Disorder. I came to realize that it is an illness that can be diagnosed, just like many other illnesses.

I know that God heals. I’ve been miraculously healed myself. I also know that our “faith” can make us whole. I also know of many folks that were standing in “faith” waiting for God to do something miraculous, and lost a loved one because they didn’t allow the doctors to do what they were trained to do. Meanwhile, God was simply waiting to be asked whether to fight or let Him do the fighting for us, as in the O.T. There are many ways to reach the desired end, healing, but we need to find out what God wants in the moment and trust the still small voice He’s given us, His sheep, that know His voice. His answer may be different every time. He doesn’t seem to be too big into formulas.

Cheryl, wife and mother of five

I became a Christian at the age of 5. Over the years my relationship with Christ grew. I actively sought His Will. While in Bible School, I started having difficulty with stress and started to burn out. Then I married and started having children. Once the babies started coming, I realized that something was wrong. No one else, not even my husband noticed…but I did. I kept complaining to my doctor and he kept saying it was normal for a new mother. Finally he asked me if I thought it was Post Partum Depression. I thought mothers with Post Partum wanted to kill their babies and since I didn’t have this particular urge I said no. When I was pregnant with my last child I finally went to a Christian councellor as I had enough. I had a Christian maternal grandmother who committed suicide when I was a child and I started hearing things about the rest of my family…both on my father and mother’s side…that led me to believe my depression could be an inherited illness. I went to the counsellor to figure out if this was an inherited physical problem, learned behavior, or what. I didn’t think it was spiritual as I had a good relationship with God nor did I think it was demonic. When my last child was born, I thought I would be okay as I had learned alot, however, I ended up with Post Partum Psycosis. It was scary, but the Grace of God helped my family through. What scared me was how prayer did not seem to help. How easily I came to my breaking point. How strong the urges were. I had no comfort and no peace. I had no help from anyone. In fact, people only hurt me more. I had started medication the first year, but it only made me sleep. I tried herbal remedies and that worked better, but with children to look after and a household to run, it was not enough. Finally I got some decent medication and life was able to have some balance to it. Now it is 10 years later. I am still on medication. I still have mood swings. My relationship with God swings with my moods. I thought my depression was my “thorn in my flesh” that God would teach me to bear, but now I am not so sure. Paul’s thorn in the flesh glorified God. My depression is a barrier between me and God. I have a difficult time praying, I do not want to go to church. Everything I believe in seems wrong. I feel like I am going backward. So many people say life was horrid and then they met God. What happens when you know God and life is still horrid. So far this website is just debating about what mental illness is. I have mental illness, I am treating it physically. I have lots of knowledge, but no answers. I just want my relationship with God back.

First, I was an atheist most of my life and a flat out sinner in every ways possible. I was subjected to secular treatment for mental illness diagnosed as a Bi-polar disorder, given pills that reduced my God-given emotions to bland nothingness, so the ups and downs would not distress me, unduly.

Psychiatric treatment was with a doctor and a counselor who listened in empathy, but included no instruction in the right way to live, to feel and respond to feelings and thoughts that frightened and confounded me. Nor was any information given to help me be at peace within a frustrating and confusing world.

Suicide, drugs, sex, and failed relationships were the norm in my life. However, at the age of fifty, I left jail after a hit and run accident, and because several Christians had been there for me, I decided to take a closer look at this God they considered so highly.

April 1989, I began to read the bible, put aside my drug use, and over the next several years let go of a painful relationship. Through it all, I discovered a God of love, gained instruction in the right way to live, discovered through Jesus that it was okay to experience my emotions, but that there was a better way to respond to them than acting out (in a sinful manner).

Because of a suicide attempt with the Lithium, that only through the grace of God I survived, I gave up the medications and learned to manage my emotions, just as others have done when they made the decision to live a responsible life without the mind numbing drugs psychiatrists prescribe for bi-polar disorders, and schizophrenia (John Nash, the Nobel Prize winner is another example).

I was a registered professional nurse when I quit atheism in favor of Christianity, and I gave up my mental illness in favor of a life without sin, or as near as I get daily. Thank God for forgiveness.

I traded my RN for a license as a mental health counselor, and gave that up in favor of biblical counseling. I now have a full time ministry in my home where I teach people to depend on God for ALL their needs, mental, emotional, and physical, and the understanding comes over time.

Some come to counseling already on psychiatric meds that the commercials advertise as THE answer, and doctors tell many people they will be on them the rest of their life. You see, it’s cheaper for the system and insurance companies than on-going therapy for several years.

Paul was sent to Tarsus where he remained for a while before being sent into ministry. I waited several years, learning and growing in the Lord before God sent me into ministry. It’s all about waiting on the Lord and leaning not to your own understanding but every word of God.

Psychiatrist give medications and quick therapy because it’s simple and easy, not because it has long lasting effects. God is not an easy answer, and his answers can take time, when we take the time to learn and understand from the Word.

MODERATOR NOTE: By allowing this post I am in no way endorsing any view that a Christian should not take meds or see a psychiatrist. God uses both.

When it comes to church, and I volunteer for one and the rest of my life is in one way or another going to be spent in God’s pastures and/or grape presses, there is no other place where the banal trivialities of small-talk seems to be de rigeur as the many “fellowship halls” in parishes and congregations across the land. God help the person who has a real problem that needs urgent attention or knows of someone else who does and tries to garner sufficient time to discuss the matter. I’m not saying everyone is too busy or callous to attend to their brother’s or sister’s continued beef with the local shrink; but for God’s sake, when a person loses a job, has a loved one battling a manic phase of bipolar depression and is turning the house upside down, it won’t hurt any church for its members to pay more attention to those among us who just happen to have brains that need more attention paid to than others.

We might talk slower, if for nothing else than to make sure our thoughts come out cogently. We might be figidity, but so are others, but aren’t treated as lepers because any mental defect they have might not have come to the surface (yet.)

Some of us are very interested and keep up with the news of the day and would love to strike up a conversation involving religion and current trends in society. But once the “word’s out” about our condition(s), all of a sudden people who might otherwise take you seriously or show any interest at all, just bypass you or nod condescendingly (even IF they don’t have half the knowledge on a given topic than you, but have the gall to behave as if they did only because they’re not being treated (yet).

There millions of us out there, and within our respective church doors. But we haven’t been given the recognition we deserve as equals, (yet.)

It’s not just race that makes the hours of 8 to noon on any given Sunday in America the most segregated hours of the week.

I have read some articles where Jesus’ casting out of a demon was regarded as a sort of kindly tolerance of a primitive worldview by those He was helping, but that doesn’t sit well with me, simply because it would seem to amount to patronizing behavior, which is almost dismissive of another person, and because of His character, that being that He was without sin, and was in nature, all truth. Christ treated every type of person with respect and honesty.

Also, there are some instances in scripture where a person was healed with no reference to a demon, such as the pool at Siloam, where Christ asked the invalid whether or not he wanted to get well, and also many others like the woman with the issue of blood. Sometimes He said things like “Your sins are forgiven” or “Be it done according to your faith”. I don’t see a black and white prescriptive response, but rather Christ exercising His knowledge of each individual as He responded to them. I would gather from that that some conditions have direct demonic involvement in them and some do not. Some are the direct result of sinful choices and others are not.

Each case requires discernment and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and a great deal of sensitivity and respect of the boundaries of each person’s soul, something I have often seen little of in so called ministry sessions. It’s as though some folks think “Right makes Might Allright” when ministering to someone whose mind and emotions are a mess.

My own experiences in this arena have me thinking at this point, that mental illness and demonic activity are not an either/or equation but more often both things are happening. Demons are spiritual parasites or wolves, if you will, attracted to places in a person’s life where they can operate submerged just beneath the “weeds” of a a person’s issues (sins, wounds, broken patterns of living, rebellion). Like lions and wolves, they prefer an easy kill. Who is more vulnerable than a person whose defences are down, whose ability to think rationally and thus exercise choice strongly and wisely, than someone who is mentally ill, whether that illness is because of years of soul destroying sin, chemical imblalance or awful abuse?

Sadly, there is little support/effective ministry in church circles for those who are suffering from mental illness. Somehow those who are mentally ill are seen as a different kind of human being than the rest of us with more so called normal problems. Thus, the mentally ill person is isolated from support and healing fellowship when he or she most needs it! It is fair to also acknowledge that to a person grounded in reality, a mentally ill person’s speech and mannerisms can be very frightening and uncomfortable to be around and some mentally ill folks are a danger to others and themselves. No pollyanna christianity will serve well here. But the percentage of folks who could be ministered to and even restored in a church setting is far greater than the percentage being helped at this point. This is something that could be changed with education and training. Thanks for letting me post my thoughs. Blessings
Scatrdsheep