The way the church struggles with addressing mental health

Too often us humans tell ourselves that religious participation will solve all of our problems. That all of the resources we need are in one place. But are they? Is church truly the place that fix all of our temporal and physical needs as well as the spiritual? Does it have the resources required to do so. I'm not sure. 

This may be the ultimate expression of "I need prayer and my medication" I've ever written. Because I am seeing more and more how different aspects of my life need different helps and attention. There was a time where I tied my mental health to my spirituality. But that has changed. Mostly through experience. Now I view them separately but impacted by each other. Both because I've needed to address my mental health. And because I channeled it into a career. 

I love my current role in my career. I'm passionate about it. Being able to help people on recovery is a massive aid to my own recovery. I love being able to have access to literature and training to stay up to date. And that very access. Seeing the data. Seeing anecdotes. It's caused me some problems over the years. 

One of the largest struggles with the faith of my youth is how it discusses and treats mental health. This is especially true with how it treats abuse, trauma, and practitioners. 

I say this with hopefully a humility and earnestness that is apparent. But I can't hold back when I see harm actively occurring that doesn't need to. Whether that harm is purposeful or unintended it must be addressed.

I'm coming out swinging and kind of heavy with this one but it's been weighing on my heart for awhile now and I'm not going to be able to stay silent on this one. I feel that I'm uniquely positioned to speak on this as someone who both works in the mental health space and is under treatment for some of my struggles. That's something I haven't hidden and I'm usually fairly candid about, which I'm finding is rare for the men of my faith. 

Now this isn't just going to be me dunking on the church. There's enough of that out there. And I know many will find this too middle road. That's valid. That's ok. And all I can do is share my experience and my understanding. So that's what I am going to do.

I had some experiences going up that were only definable as traumatic. I don't speak about a lot of it. But there is one that I can truly reflect on from time to time. I'm not going to hash it out here, but if you want to know more you can read here.  Age 13 and 14 were rough. Watching someone receive a mortal wound will do that to you. I'm fortunate to have parents that cared and assisted me in getting help. 

The focus at that time was about adjusting to high school and processing what I'd experienced right before starting it. For that purpose therapy worked. 

This coincided with what I could call my first faith crisis. I didn't know exactly what I believed. I wondered how God could let things like this happen to people. I think teenage years are full of that. I know I'm not alone in taking the time to explore my spirituality at that age. 

Becoming a teen and leaving childhood had me questioning Christ's role and purpose. It seemed then like the primary purpose of an atoning sacrifice was for sin. The repair of it all. That repentance word. As someone in the age of their life attempting to wrestle with the hard questions, and dealing with trauma, it wasn't good enough. 

I really struggled with my place. How righteous i was over it. We'll talk more about that later. But I did find some solace. 

There was a talk in conference. It was titled Broken Things To Mend. Jeffrey R Holland delivered it. He spoke about his own struggles with depression. Not just bad feelings. But the overwhelming despair that can accompany feelings of mental illness. It was about so much more than sin. So much more than the whitewashing of emotions I had often heard of before. It may not have been revolutionary to some people. It was to me. Viewing Christ as an accessible entity to overcome those feelings, or at least receive aid. 

Prior to that the power of the atonement and repentance process to handle our own perpetrated sins and their underlying guilt and shame. That was all. It was great for that. To do more. Well the process to that was changing. 

It was about this time that I found myself reading Alma 7:11-13. It was a passage all about the healing power of Christ's atonement. Not the redeeming power, not repentance and grace. But succor, healing, from pain and affliction. 

It was the framing I needed at the time. This idea of a Savior who knew not only my sins and my foibles, but the deep sorrow, pain, anguish I felt too. About other things. Those thoughts that were weighing me down. Having hope.

That carried me for awhile. A good while. But then I left on a mission. 

It may be a silly little thing. But I arrived at the Mission Training Center (MTC) one year after losing a childhood friend to suicide. I hadn't confronted how it made me feel. And I carried that into my mission. A little seed of questioning, uncertainty. So I entered the mission field in the wonderful state of Arizona. Then due to twists of fate I had a health driven transfer to Lansing Michigan six months into my mission. All of that stress combined. I had to do a screening. First with my mission president and his wife. Then with a social worker. I was able to stay on my mission and meet with a psychiatrist and other professionals to make that happen. I'm grateful for that. For a system and network exists for that. 

I really am. But that experience illustrated that mental health aid, the actual application of therapy, the practice of it, existed out of the church. Just like medicine does. I needed help my leaders couldn't offer.

I carried that to when I needed help again during military service and especially after.

Cracks formed in how I felt about my mental health. How helpful church. How hard it was to relate to a body of people who didn't have the same experience I had anymore. The need for professional help was now viewed with strain and suspicion by my fellow members and parishioners.

The careful balance I had collapsed almost completely. I think I have to share how and why. And start illustrating some of the ways the church and it's community and surrounding culture fall short. 

First was the utter lack of understanding of our emotional and mental health. I worry we often struggle with when handling that crossroads of faith and mental health is in regards to our approach to our feelings. I worry we often conflate spirituality and emotional states. We overly seek the positive experiences and emotions and shy from more difficult to process feelings. And in doing so we lose the ability to recognize and regulate our emotions. At worst we come to believe that our mood is intrinsically tied to our righteousness. I know we fixate on the fruits of the spirit. I believe rightfully so. We use it as a road map of what to seek. But we need to remember that everything comes in seasons. And not every negative emotion is misplaced or started from a bad place, an evil place. Sometimes our brain and body are just reacting normally to the situation we find ourselves. Sometimes our neurotransmitters are out of control. And that's all normal. That's being human. Life is about finding the balance. 

I personally have felt the struggle with that in regards to my mania. I'm bipolar. A lot of my struggles don't come from an anxious place. Sometimes depressed. But often the most dangerous and out of control times have come from the good place. Positive emotions. Or what seems to be good. Feelings of elation, energy, and what appears to be positive thinking. Not controlling those emotions can lead to dangerous actions, impulse control, grandiose thinking, and in their worst iterations hallucinations and/or psychosis. 

What happens next is a crash. And we often focus on the dangers and the disruption of that more than what came before. It's easier to see crippling, energy sucking depression as having energy to complete tasks. It might be the American work ethic. It may be the focus on positive emotions and their relationships to the fruit of the spirit. I don't know. 

But for those of us feeling our cognition racing away, whether it feels good, or feels bad, it has to be addressed. I worry we don't have the language and understanding to express that. 

We as a church culture have often all of these feelings and our health and wellness like blessings in the vein of the critics of Job. Good feelings reflect that fruit of the spirit. Our health tied to behavior in the Word of Wisdom comes to mind. We struggle to realize how our mental health can be beyond our control. How our biology and outside factors can have as much or more impact than our actions. 

But that happens. 

We are pretty good at understanding the physical manifestations of trauma. A broken bone, a black eye. But we struggle to recognize the unseen damages. The unease, the hyper-vigilance, the nightmares. Because of that we need more trauma informed leadership. To know how to handle these situations. 

Sometimes we need medication. Sometimes they need specific therapeutic intervention. There's just no other option other than a professional intervening. 

There are other issues where we fall short in this specific avenue. We have a religious structure and ritual for addressing the needs of the sinner and perpetrator. We do not have the same for victims. We have the same doctrinal access via the atonement to aid through Christ. But in practice that doesn't happen. And often we exacerbate the feelings of trauma exhibited above. Especially when we stigmatize or diminish the need for mental health treatment and medication. 

That same misunderstanding comes with how we view some populations we desire to participate in church. I'm thinking in specific about the LGBTQ community. How we address this population matters. Historical they were followed. Conversion therapy was supported and often mandated. The way we stigmatized this group lives on today. Comparisons between being gay or trans and being a pedophile to still persist. That matters. Yes we have had websites and statements addressing the fact that some people are born the way they are. That it isn't necessarily a choice. But we have had recent policies that still limited baptismal access to these individuals children. Stigmatize bathroom use. Etc. And limit participation in church. 

I don't know how to overcome that. But we can't avoid how to bridge the gap between what is considered the best practice in the field by evidence and measurements with how the church functions. 

And it's caused consternation and has continued to challenge my faith. 

Writing this may pass me off as disillusioned. Treat me as disloyal. I'm aware of that. Some will wish I dedicated an equal number of word counts to the positive as much as the negative. Others will feel I've gone too soft on the church. People will feel how they are going to feel and I can't change that. I won't even attempt too. And I think that's for the best. 

Large institutions have power. The culture they create carries weight. And spiritual institutions compound that with spiritual authority. I think it's time to examine some of the practices and cultural norms that surround the church I grew up in. We can do better. And I would argue we as a group of people ought to do better. I say that to active, inactive, those who have had their roles removed. We're all part of this culture and community. We live with each other. We share family. We share common history and experiences. Let's do our best to make our existence as beneficial and welcoming as possible to all of the people around us. 

My faith, my spirituality saved my life at one point. It continues to form who I am. I am forever grateful for it. But it couldn't save me later. It didn't have the tools and resources to meet my needs. 

They can work together and we need to see better how and try to do that. 

I work with chaplains all the time in my current role. That blend best practices and spirituality. They find ways to meet people where they are and uplift them through their treatment. 

Maybe we could find that. Maybe we could train bishops to work with counselors. Maybe we could bring counselors into the congregation. 

I don't know. I'm spitballing. 

What it boils down to though is spirituality and mental health effect each other. And we can't solve all of one and ignore the other. 

People need prayer and medication.