mental health, spiritual growth

[Christ_empowered]

OK. I've been in and out of psychiatric treatment since 18 years old. Family issues, low on the totem pole, blah blah blah.

It dawned on me...my "Bipolar disorder" has improved dramatically, 2 years into being Born Again. So has my "personality disorder." Which raises some questions...

...are disorders of thought, mood, and behavior really diseases? Even if you need meds and talk therapy for a season, is it always a permanent thing?

I'm NOT into Jay Adams and other "Christian counselors" who pretty much blame the person/patient for everything that's gone wrong in his/her life. That's condemnation and ignores so many psychosocial factors in favor of this feel good (for the counselor) patient-blaming. Its self-righteous condemnation, and I don't approve.

That being said...I'm starting to think that a lot of "mental patients" committed sins, had unfortunate lives growing up, didn't fit in, etc., and things went bad. Shrinks slap labels on people and drug us up, and then its hard to get out of Mental Health, Inc. You WILL be a patient, whether you like it or not. If you disagree with your diagnosis, you lack insight. You're in denial. Take your pills and shut up.

Shrinks deal with more women than men. non-white minorities and poor people are diagnosed with psychotic disorders more often and given higher doses of antipsychotic drugs than white people and more affluent people (antipsychotics can be quite helpful--I take one right now--but they also can cause a lot of problems).

For instance...I'm diagnosed "Bipolar I w/psychotic features." When I came from a "rinky dink middle class family" that was once working class, it was "paranoid Schizophrenia." When I was ugly and stupid, it was "narcissistic personality disorder." Now, my family is upper-middle, maybe upper class and solidly behind me. Boom! You're manic depressive! I'm also white and male, so that helps. My former shrinks and many in my community call me "schizophrenic"...because I got "uppity." See what I'm saying? Diagnosis is political, and all sorts of variables go into it besides the person's symptoms.

Which isn't to say there's nothing to mental illness. I do sometimes hear voices. I've also been traumatized. For this season of my life, I think meds--carefully selected, carefully dosed meds--are appropriate. But should I be on the same meds, at the same doses, indefinitely, to prevent a "relapse" of an "illness" that doesn't show up in blood work or on a brain scan?

When I disagree with my former shrinks, they say I lack insight, can't comprehend, etc. I pointed out some contradictions between my take on Christianity and their beliefs, so they say I've been "brain washed" by Pentecostals, and that I'm "in denial." These same people also say I'm "nothing special" and need to "know my place in society." See where I'm going with this? Then I breeze into community mental health--which is officially based on the "recovery model"--and they say "You're Bipolar I. Please take your meds and we won't do court ordered treatment, because you have too much insight for that. You need regular counseling. Are you still going to Liberty? That's wonderful..."

I'm just one "trouble maker" who's been put through it. Hopefully, I'll be able to move, but remember...they never destroy psychiatric records. Alter them, yes. "re-evaluate," absolutely. Change diagnoses...if it serves their purposes, of course. But shred them and let you go? No. Most likely, most of the time, NO. My records will outlive me.

I also think being a "mental patient" is something of a social role, and I'm failing at it. I'm expected, apparently, to live in abject poverty and take Haldol injections, and if I don't like it, "kill yourself" (direct quote from back in the day). This is what Dr.Thomas Szasz would call "psychiatric slavery," and its rough, lemme tell you.

And Jesus figures into this because...He saved me, is saving me, and I pray will save me, now and in the world to come. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that God wants us to have a spirit of a sound mind (not of timidity), and that we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. What is impossible with man is possible with God...

...also, being "washed and made clean (and whole, too) " is huge for me. The past really is over. Christian time is linear--there's a past, present, and future. My past was awful. Personal sin, lots of stuff going on around me, sad times. But, I've been saved and set free. I'm not the same person. I was dead in my sins--no more dead than any other wretch, but dead, nonetheless--and now I'm alive in Christ Jesus.

Problem? Many of the "experts" I dealt with back in the day continue telling and re-telling my past. I don't even get to tell my own life story. Everything about me, especially my past, has been twisted and (re)shaped to fit into their perspective. I've been called: low IQ, pathological liar, masochist, promiscuous, self-destructive, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Obsessive Compulsive, Schizophrenic, making stuff up (malingering), poly-substance abuser, hopeless case. I've been subjected to 2 rounds of involuntary Electroshock, at ages 20 and 23.

"Trouble maker." That's me. Because I asked too many questions about meds, because I didn't agree with my diagnosis, etc.

The more I grow in Christ Jesus, the more people around here and some of my ex-shrinks talk about my "schizophrenia" and all that. When I needed to be in a mental hospital--dead eyed, tics, low IQ, unable to work, etc.--they laughed. They didn't commit me because they'd destroyed me. Now, "it is no longer I who lives, it is Christ who lives in me," and I'm 30 and healthier than ever, smart, and pursuing a life outside of their diagnoses, outside of their prognoses, outside of their authority...and they've released my confidential info ("just expressing my opinion!"), so on and so forth. Spiritual warfare? I'm tempted to think so.

UGH! This is an AM ramble, because I'm frustrated, because I'm a bit scared, because I'm sick of the situation, and because I want Born Again Christians to know what its like to be an "uppity mental patient."

Psychiatry and psychology are largely based on secular, often anti-Christ ideas. Jung? Freud? Hey, guess what...anti-Christ. Humanistic psychology? Anti-Christ. They promise freedom and "self-actualization." They're really just a punitive, sometimes violent enforcement arm for the worldly values that govern most of society. Electroshock, heavy drugging, court ordered drugging (they can get a judge to sign an order, and then you get injected w/ antipsychotics that slow-release for 1 month or so...), even "psychosurgery" (yes, they still do that...a fancy, modern lobotomy is still a lobotomy).

I feel trapped, and I'm just 1 person this has happened to. I'm not trying to be overly dramatic or whatever, because Christ has worked, I pray is working, and I pray will work in my life, but...

...this is rough. The closer I get to Christ, the more I "die to self daily," the more diagnoses my ex-shrinks and my community throws my way. I write better, I do well at Liberty, I get along well with my parents, I'm physically healthier than ever before (OK, fat and I need to work out, but...healthy), my eyes are bright, and...

...the community mental health people call it "recovery," or at least my counselor and my shrink do. If it wasn't for my family and the attorney they hired, I'd be either in the state mental hospital or, more likely, the state "psychoprison" (Prison for the "Criminally Insane").

Think about it.

 

[jeff77]

Christ_empowered I can't speak for every case or type of mental disorder, but I do believe that some people that have severe depression do bring it upon themselves. I was one of them. I know it might sound judgmental (it did to me at one time), but if you really think about it there is more hope if a mental health problem like bi-polar is brought upon by one's self, because that also means that you can work your way out of it. I also believe that there are times and situations where God is definitely going to work in a divine way to help us fix something like depression. In my opinion there is nothing more liberating than realizing that God has already given us the tools we need to overcome depression. For me it was/is the Gospel and was sitting right there in front of me the whole time.