Rev. Craig Rennebohn on mental illness awareness

A Commentary on this Issue

October 5-11 is Mental Illness Awareness Week. PlainViews staff thought it would be appropriate to devote an entire issue to mental illness. The Managing Editor invited me to serve as this Special Issue's Editor and I have been honored to do so.

In order to understand the world of mental illness, it is important to hear from those who work in this field. It is also important to be aware of the writings that are available and can help chaplains and other spiritual care providers to better comprehend the dynamics and difficulties of this world. This issue of PlainViews, by its articles and by this bibliographical commentary, hopes to assist you on that road to deeper understanding. All of the articles are written by those involved with the often misunderstood and once shunned world of persons who experience mental illness. Nancy Berlinger's column also addresses this issue as does the film review by Sarah Masters. As part of Mental Illness Awareness Week 2008, the 5th annual National Day of Prayer will be observed on Tuesday, October 7, by communities and congregations across the country. We hope that you will take the time to join in this time of prayer and awareness.

Below is a bibliographic commentary that will hopefully help you to identify resources that can be of help to you as you seek to gain greater knowledge about mental illness.

A contemporary thread of dialogue between psychiatry and religion could be said to begin with the writings of Oskar Pfister, a Swiss pastor who was a student and life long friend of Freud. Pfister wrote in contrapuntal dialogue to Freud’s prolific output. Pfister both offered pastoral reframes of Freud’s theory and practice, and explored the theological dimensions of questions raised by Freud’s viewpoint.

In the 1930’s Anton Boisen, in classic confessional style, wrote of his own mental illness in Out of the Depths, and reflected on his collaboration with psychiatry, as a state hospital chaplain, in The Exploration of the Inner World. Wayne Oates, 30 years later, published Religious Care of the Psychiatric Patient, a book deeply informed by a psychotherapeutic perspective.

There is indeed a rich and ever growing literature of pastoral counseling, and dialogue between psychology and religion.

Writing and research focused on spiritual care and serious mental illness, and a dialogue between biological psychiatry and religion is sparser. From the science side, Robert Pollack’s The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith: Order, Meaning and Free Will, is a creative exploration of the intersection of science, medicine and religion. Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili’s Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, is another example of approaching the realm of spirituality and religion from a biological perspective, in particular from the fields neuroscience and psychiatry. Harold Koenig, the author of the Handbook of Religion and Mental Health, and his colleagues at the Center for Spirituality and Health at Duke University have been instrumental in fostering research and writing rooted in current understandings of brain science and psychiatry.

Carol Wills has developed an annotated bibliography of literature on spirituality, religion and mental illness at a website that also includes links to other mental illness ministry resources - www.congregationalresources.org/MHIntro.asp. In general the authors write from a faith perspective and with an appreciation of current understandings of biological psychiatry. On the site are brief synopses of Susan Gregg Schroeder’s Shadow Voices, Doug Murren’s Churches that Heal, Richard Roukema’s Souls in Distress, Robert Randall’s Walking through the Valley, and John Swinton’s Resurrecting the Person.

The late Stu Govig has written movingly and helpfully from his perspective as a pastor, Christian educator, and parent in Souls are Made for Endurance: Surviving Mental Illness in the Family. Kathleen Greider, professor of pastoral care and counseling at the Claremont School of Theology has drawn on the writings of Susan Gregg Schroeder, Stu Govig and the memoirs of others such as David Hilfiker and Parker Palmer, who have experienced mental illness to write Much Madness is Divinest Sense, analyzing the narratives of suffering from mental illness for insight and wisdom into pastoral theology and care, healing and hope.

Also, Marc Galanter, who I quote in my article in Education and Research, is also the author of Spirituality and the Healthy Mind: Science, Theology and the Need for Personal Meaning, Oxford University Press, 2005.

The good news is that the deep shame and stigma so long associated with mental illness is being dispelled. In our communities, congregations and seminaries, brain illnesses are a subject of new understanding and growing compassion.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.