Spirituality Mental Illness

Mental Illness & Christianity plays like a friend is encouraging you over a cup of coffee, she just happens to have the bible verses ready so that the conversation can be led by God’s word. If you’re looking for God’s way in a relationship with someone who sparks frustration or strife in your life, this book will give you some things to think about as it pertains to your role, using your spiritual gifts, and being sanctified in his truth.

Are you weary from cycles of pain that never break? Do you battle anxiety, addiction, or dark thoughts that prayer and therapy haven’t healed? Have you wondered if God could truly forgive or restore someone as broken as you? If you’ve tried everything and still feel trapped, you’re not alone. You’re not powerless. Yes, there is a real enemy behind your pain—but there is also a real Savior who came to break every chain.

For Christians, particularly those in vocational ministry, the stigma surrounding mental illness and mental health often creates an atmosphere of secrecy where the enemy's lies reign. Julie Busler understands the pain of mental illness and has learned that trials not only humanize us but increase our capacity to be used by God. In Joyful Sorrow, she invites us into her own journey where a mental breakdown took her from being a missionary to a suicidal patient. With vulnerability and grace, Julie demonstrates that even in the sorrow of mental illness, joy can coexist.

Mental Illness is real. Will the Church get real? This book is a collection of essays from various authors: men and women, pastors and congregants, counselors and nurses, parents and children. All have a unique view of how mental health conditions affect people, and how the church has responded to these circumstances. Whispers in the Pews tackles how the mentally ill have been, and still are, treated in the church at large by sharing stories. This is not fundamentally a teaching book, but a book of moments and lives, knitted together by the common theme of mental health.

Hope Amid Hopelessness is a true story about the loving, merciful, caring, all powerful, ever present, gracious, just, sovereign, personal Abba Father (God) working in the lives of Jim and Laura Hansen. As Jim cared for Laura while she struggled with major clinical depression that later led to borderline personality disorder, he realized quickly that he could not fight this battle alone. Turning to his Abba Father, he sought understanding, knowledge, and wisdom from the only source that could truly help.

The book bridges the dangerous divide between faith communities and those living with the stigma of mental health challenges. Faith leaders seeking greater understanding for those with troubled minds as well as those impacted by brain illnesses (including loved ones) will benefit from listening to Roberts narrate his personal and pastoral journey through bipolar disorder.

In a conversation spanning half hour segments numbering seven on the same number of separate days this religion writer talked with the Reverend Doctor Lawrence Michael Cameron, OAC. The subject: Mental Illness. That is the Reverend Doctor's business and has been for 25 years as a pastoral counselor. We talked by phone to his home in Indiana from mine in Mill Valley, California. An advocate for the mentally ill, Doctor C, as he is affectionately known, bent his comments to let the listener know of his favorable sense of hope for mentally ill people and their treatment.