The Power of Spirituality and Faith on Mental Wellness

Faith is an often overlooked aspect of the human experience in modern clinical mental health settings. Clinicians many times don't acknowledge the healing and stabilizing power a belief in God has for an individual. As someone who has first hand experience in the mental health system as a patient, I can tell you many professionals often overlook spirituality and faith. Some professionals even believe that these components can be counterproductive to the recovery of someone with mental illness. I have heard it first hand from some professionals and many outsiders that they consider the idea of God as a delusion in itself. Now don't get me wrong, these people are a small minority, but the influence of the secular position on these matters in the mental health system is substantial. The secular view that there is only the physical explanation for someone's behavior, i.e. brain chemistry, often seriously miscalculates the quite potent reality that there may be other forces at work other than just brain chemistry when someone's behavior is divergent from what is socially and culturally acceptable. When you look at culture, and the many cultural themes that exist in our stories, our legends, and our myths, there is a common theme about the dichotomy that exists in nature between aspects and natures of reality such as light and dark, or good and evil. This things resound in our culture and our history, and our awareness of them has been present with our species since the dawn of the historical record. Now today, these realities seem to be under attack by many different groups of people in many places, whether it is the scientific community, the legal community, the political community, or the academic community or others. I have heard it from some people, even members of my own family, that deny the existence of both God and the nature of evil. They refuse to believe that there is an agency that resounds above just common human motivations that drive the actions of mankind. I strongly disagree with this view. I think it is dangerous to just deny the existence of what has been in our history for our entire existence, the nature of evil and darkness.
         I don't blame some of the clinicians who I have worked with who have in the past viewed my beliefs as delusion. They don't know any better. Their mind's eye is fixed only on what they can put under a microscope or validate through the scientific approach to these particular problems. I am not discrediting, nor am I attempting to discredit, scientific research into psychology and psychiatry. The evidence we have discovered on the chemical factor in neurofunctioning and brain processing is substantial and incredibly valid. We have volumes of research texts on our findings on how certain chemicals govern mood, aggression, thinking patterns, behavior, and to some extent intelligence. What I am saying is from my experience there is a strong influence of agencies, or "forces" if that is the word you want to use, that may be not necessarily human (Ideas, or some other entity we don't completely understand or acknowledge the existence of) on the content that is put into the mind that causes such a radical disruption of normal behavior and thinking, almost like an infection of our mental processes by a complex belief or idea, or set of beliefs or ideas, that completely overhaul our understanding and ability to process reality. In a way it is kind of a form of possession, but the modern mental health community has become so detached from the spiritual component of our existence that if I were to attempt to make an argument for this view in a clinical setting, my doctors would probably request a med change for me! Haha! This is my problem with the modern mental health system.
       I do believe that it is dangerous for a society to come to a point where it so blatantly and shamelessly attacks the possibility of the existence of evil, as well as the entity who has been historically responsible for it, when we have seen acts of evil so horrific we can't even understand the psyche of those who have carried them out upon our country. It blows my mind that I was once in a court room, about to be committed to a mental institution, and the psychologist on my case had the balls to mock my belief in dark forces when the nation I was born into has been engaged in a war with people who kill themselves flying commercial aircrafts into skyscrapers, strap women and children into suicide vests and send them at our personnel and detonate them, and industrialize and institutionalize the act of rape by locking up hundreds to thousands of women and children in warehouses and buildings where they would be raped by fighters dozens of times a day, everyday, and we have been engaged in this war for almost two decades, and this guy mocked my belief in dark forces? WOW! The point with this is I just want to warn people of the dangers of ignorance in many of its forms. Someone could be incredibly intellectually gifted, and still be completely oblivious to or reject entirely truths that our species has held dear to and followed for thousands of years, and these truths still survive. Just because you are a doctor doesn't mean you are a genius, and just because you are a genius doesn't mean you are omniscient.
       My relationship with God has saved my life multiple times. My faith tells me that if I willfully and with clear intent and awareness carry out the act of murder on myself, I suffer severe consequences. My faith also tells me that Jesus has a plan for me here, and he wants me to fulfill it to the best of my abilities. My faith motivates me as a person who struggles with mental health issues to consider others in my actions and maintain resilience in my recovery from my trauma and history. My faith has led me to new friends and new adventures. My faith in Jesus gives me hope in that in eternity I will know complete fulfillment of my heart's desire, and being in God's presence is fulfilling enough. That hope is the reason I go forward in this life, the hope that this is not the only life I get, and that my dreams aren't dead after all. My faith makes me value the lives of others as well as myself, and makes me think of the impact I have had on my friends, my family, and my community and how much they all love me, and how devastated they would be if I left this world too soon. This is what My faith does for me.
       For someone who struggles with mental illness, faith can be incredibly healing. It gives people hope and comfort. It gives people immense joy and strength. Someone who has faith and struggles with mental health issues can find a purpose that allows them to push forward in their journey on earth, and an assurance that there is a God who loves them dearly. I want people in the mental health system to know that after all the struggles someone with mental illness has been through, don't treat their hopes and dreams and especially their faith in God as delusion. You can kill someone's spirit and hope in doing so. I also want to let you know that you and we are all doing the best we can with the world we have been put in. Thank you and good night.