BIAS OF THE MENTAL HEALTH ESTABLISHMENT

I attend many online mental health discussion groups. In the last one, I related to the group that there various suggestions for self-improvement had been far beyond my reach. I had been suffering from such severe depression and panic attacks that I didn’t know if I could endure through the next day. It was only through the divine reassurance of Christ that He loved me and was always there for me that I was enabled to press forward. Sometimes, I try to explain that all of their self-help prescriptions are merely adding an extra burden to their already faltering shoulders, setting them up for another failure.

However, what I offer is usually politely, yet resolutely, rejected because “not everyone here believes in God.” Yet, not everyone there might believe in their self-help prescriptions. Nevertheless, that does not stop them from presenting their own now-popular solutions.

In view of this latest study and of much prior research supporting the benefits of Christian faith, the mental health community appears to remain highly biased:

·       The study, spearheaded by Dr. Ying Chen of the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, found that “attendance at religious services at least once per week” was associated with a 33 percent lower hazard among men and a remarkable 68 percent lower hazard of death from despair among women compared with never attendance [according to results released 5/6/2020].

·       As the most extensive study of its kind, the team followed a large cohort of more than 100,000 nurses and health care professionals in the United States over a 17-year period.

·       According to the researchers, the findings suggest that “religious service attendance is associated with a lower risk of death from despair among health care professionals. https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/05/12/study-religious-practice-drastically-reduces-deaths-from-despair/

In view of these findings, and many similar findings, concern for the welfare of those suffering should not hold us back from presenting the very evident benefits of the Faith.

The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, wrote, 15 years later, in Further along the Road Less Traveled about his journey from Zen Buddhism to Christianity. He had repeatedly observed that his Christian clients would improve, no matter how serious their psychiatric condition. He concluded:

·       The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth…We cannot lose once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us holiness…We are guaranteed winners!"