Mental Illness and Depression (i)
Sunday, 22 October, 2006
(I want to start putting up my depression talk in bits. This will be a bit weird because it's a talk, not a blog post [I decided it would be too much of a bother to try and convert it into blog form] so you'll just have to bear with me and piece it all the chunks together. I will try to give you an overall picture of what happened that evening so you get some context.)
Emma was MC-ing. She started with a slideshow presentation which had a definition of “mental illness” from Wikipedia, some stats on how many people suffer from depression from BeyondBlue, a list of famous people who are depression sufferers (e.g. Jim Carrey, Audrey Hepburn, Yves Saint Laurent) and a list of different types of mental illnesses to give everyone an idea of how big the topic was.
Then she put up the flash presentation that's at the beginning of the I had a Black Dog website (it's an excerpt from the book). Then she interviewed me (general questions about what I did and stuff) and asked me why (since I'm not a doctor, a counsellor, a psychiatrist or a psychologist) I am “qualified” to speak on this topic. I talked a little bit about my depression and then a little about Ben's depression.
(Ed: I remembered this morning that I forgot to put in the R&R exercise: Emma got everyone to write down a list of things that the girls found restful, relaxing and fun. She intro-ed the exercise by saying, “This is going to sound really self-indulgent but there is a reason for why we're doing this which Karen will talk a bit about later” or something to that effect. She gave them two or three minutes to do the exercise. Then she got them to share in pairs, and then as a big group.)
And then I started my talk:
Introduction
Thank you so much for coming tonight-especially as it's Friday and you must all be pretty exhausted with end-of-the-week-itis. This is a very difficult topic to be thinking about-particularly on a Friday night when you're exhausted and maybe a little emotional to begin with because you're exhausted.
Depression and mental illness is a topic that sparks off a lot of different emotions: confusion, sadness, frustration ... maybe even anger. It's a massive topic, as Emma has already pointed out—not only because of the number of conditions that fall under the heading of “depression and mental illness” but because it touches on so many theological areas: God's character, God's sovereignty, human responsibility, predestination, sin, the body, eschatology and, of course, the big one: the question of suffering and evil. I'm sure you can think of more.
We've only got about an hour and obviously there is heaps of stuff I'm not going to be able to cover during this time. I am not going to be able to go into every single mental illness in detail. In fact, I'm ignoring most of them because I've chosen to focus specifically on depression as it's probably the most common mental illness in our society today. I am also not going to be able to explore and discuss each of the doctrines which relate to this topic—not even the one about suffering and evil.
(Incidentally, if you do struggle with the question of how a loving God can allow suffering and evil in this world, on the back of that article [I gave them an article from The Briefing called “Helping a Friend with Depression” in #333] I've given you, I've reviewed three very good books that will help you think through it.)
What I am going to do is three things:
- Firstly, I am going to have a look at how the Bible can help us think about this topic. I know that some of you will be impatient for me to get to the practical stuff about what depression is and how we can help people who have it. But before we start talking about that, I think it's worthwhile to look at the Bible because it gives us a very good framework for thinking about illness in general and mental illness in particular. This framework can help us reject wrong thinking about the issue. For example, some churches say that Christians shouldn't get depressed, and the ones who do obviously don't have enough faith.
- Secondly, I'm going to have a look at how depression affects Christians. Depression strikes at the very heart of our spiritual lives. Some of you might not be Christians so this may not be very relevant to you. I hope you will bear with me during this section.
- And thirdly, before we have question time, I want us to do some thinking about how we can help our friends and family who have depression.
So let's begin by having a quick look at what I like to call “A Theology of Illness”.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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thanks for posting this (and in advance for future instalments). Looking forward to reading it all.