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John Weaver, a survivor of evangelical treatment facilities himself, has compiled a checklist for those evangelicals that are suffering from a mental illness and who want to seek counselling.
1. If possible, see a Christian psychologist, rather than a biblical counselor or deliverance minister. Ask the counselor specifically if she sees mental illness as a sin, or as being caused by demons. If she does, PLEASE consider seeing a psychologist
2. Avoid therapies like neuroplasticity and biblical counseling that put all success for the therapy on the client’s shoulders. These counseling regimens may sometimes work, but their emphasis on sin\responsibility will be problematic for evangelical believers.
3. If you do have a biblical counselor, ask that counselor specifically what mental illnesses she does and does not consider a sin, or if she even believes mental illness exists. I have read evangelical texts that have stated that tourettes, aspbergers, and even autism are caused by sin. Some evangelicals have even implied that fibromyalgia is not a legitimate illness.
4. If you have a secular counselor, make sure to carefully explain evangelical views of mental illness. This will allow your counselor to better negotiate your mental illness and faith issues, respecting both your mental health and your faith.
The rest of John’s posts are well worth reading as well.
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[...] Sean the Blogonaut wrote an interesting post today on Counselling for Mentally Ill EvangelicalsHere’s a quick excerptImage via Wikipedia John Weaver , a survivor of evangelical treatment facilities himself, has compiled a checklist for those evangelicals that are suffering from a mental illness and who want to seek counselling. 1. If possible, see a Christian psychologist, rather than a biblical counselor or deliverance minister. Ask the counselor specifically if she sees mental illness as a sin, or as being caused by demons. If she does, PLEASE consider seeing a psychologist 2. Avoid therapie [...]
Thanks so much, Sean. Hopefully the list will help some people.
It is a bit of a minefield for us real psychologists and counsellors- recently I had a Mormon family come to me with their daughter who they were sure had an eating disorder- turned out she was rebelling against the strict regime in the family and I had to turn them away. Another very religious family I saw for a while would not take any advice about their daughter that was not based in their teachings- so I had to direct them back to their church for input. I try to keep religion out of my clinic and I've also had people in who believe in all sorts of woo that is very difficult to get through to the real problem|!
John, I thought your list was excellent, as is the rst of your work on mental illness and evangelical attitudes. Here's hoping you get some extra traffic from this post.
You have to wonder sometimes if half the problem is the families. I hope some of what John writes gets through to those who need it.
In my opinion most of the problem is the families – I hope he does too- some sense injected into it may help
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