RELIGION PROMOTES OTHER-DIRECTNESS – from Dr. Harold G.Koenig, M.D. Religion influences mental health by directing one’s attention outside of the self. As noted earlier every major world religious leader has instructed his followers to support and care for one another—Moses, Jesus, the Buddha, Hindu holy men, and Mohammed. All emphasized this teaching as the key […]
Read More...IN THE NAME OF JESUS How can the pain of stigma be reduced? How can the good in those of us with lived experience be recognized and affirmed? We need to have caring people to build us up. And followers of Christ are among the best individuals to make this happen because they have Jesus […]
Read More...IN THE NAME OF JESUS Sometimes life is such that one needs to talk about what goes on in one’s heart and soul. Today is one of those days. I wasn’t feeling well this morning, grieving the fact that I have a mental illness that causes me to say strange things and act in strange […]
Read More...RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE On December 20, I attended a seminar by Joseph Currier on Spiritual and Religious Competencies for Mental Health Care. The seminar was put on by Duke University’s Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, under the direction of Dr. Harold Koenig, a leading researcher in the field. Much research […]
Read More...MARJA’S REFLECTIONS ON SCRIPTURE – FREED It’s with great pleasure that I announce the release of 230 Reflections on Scripture. The writing of these devotionals began in 2013 and were emailed to individuals needing their hunger for God filled—those who needed help for their emotional needs and could not make it to meetings of the […]
Read More...January 2018 revised in October 2022 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot […]
Read More...HOPE FOR A LIFE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS Over the last few days my mind went back to Riding the Roller Coaster, a book I had published by Woodlake Publishers in 1999. It wasn’t hard for me to find a publisher at the time because it was one of the first books written by a person […]
Read More...SEEKING JUSTICE It has been seven months since my file was closed. I was cast out of the mental health system, having been a patient for all my adult life–in effect, punished for being too well. Why? Was it because I exercised my rights and tried to explain how a diagnosis I had been given […]
Read More...PSYCHIATRISTS SHOULD LISTEN BEFORE DIAGNOSING I was regularly abused for a year by someone I had least expected. It left me with emotional damage wrongly diagnosed as borderline personality disorder (BPD), the most stigmatized of all mental illnesses. This diagnosis assumed that my reaction to the mistreatment was simply due to over-sensitivity. The psychiatrist did […]
Read More...I DEVELOPED PHYSICAL DISABILITIES In many—if not most—cases, people with mental illness need medication to help them cope with life. That has certainly been the case for me. In 1965 I was diagnosed with schizophrenia because of my struggles with psychosis. That diagnosis stayed with me for twenty years until it was changed to bipolar […]
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