93. Freedom in Mental Health Part 2

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, John Hollifield and James Saifert. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Exciting to be with you this month with talking through Mental Illness and Mental Health Awareness Month. John was really encouraging last week to talk through what is mental illness. We were looking at this article from psychologypsychiatrics.com and their definition of it. A dictionary definition of mental illness to recap is a pathological change in the body must be objective, a disorder of structure or function that produces specific signs or symptoms that affect a specific location. And it's not simply a direct result of a physical injury. The Surgeon General labels like this, mental illness is difficult to diagnose. This is the Surgeon General is difficult to diagnose because there is no pathological change in the body. And so we're walking through this, looking at a couple of different articles by Charles Hodges and thepsychiatric.com. And we're going to finish looking at some things there, and then we're going to go into how we can help those that are hurting, how we can be the body of Christ and the encouragement around them during this time. So, John, what are your thoughts? Yeah, so that article is from What is Mental Illness from psychiatry.org. And so I want to read a quote from Dr. Charles Hodges where he says, I do not think it is wise or helpful to concede to the idea that compassion does not include a careful scientific and theological examination of the diseases and disorders that we are asked to accept. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. And so as we walk through the article, I want to finish up this little article on mental illness from psychiatry.org. In the section, it says treatment and self-help. And it talks about mental health treatment. And it says may include psychotherapy, which is simply talk therapy, medication, or other treatments. Often a combination of therapy and medication is most effective. Complementary and alternative therapies are also increasingly being used. Now let me say this. I'm going to be honest. I struggle with their use of psychotherapy, which is called talk therapy. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that have gone to there and done talk therapy. They come back and they say, it was not helpful because they didn't help me with anything. Whereas the Bible gives you instruction. It gives you comfort and it gives you instruction. It gives you comfort for what you're going through and then something to do. But that actually goes against sort of their many in a psychiatrist. A code of ethics is telling them what to do. And medication. We're going to have a guest on. Dr. Daniel Berger. And he has wrote a book that is fantastic. He's wrote several books. But he's going to talk about the area of medication. We're not totally against medication. But we're very cautious. You need to do your research when it comes to medication. Any type of medication, right? Any type of medication. You need to do your research. What is it going to do? What are the trials? What is the – be informed. Yeah. Hey, one thing about medication, John, that I'm going to say, and I'm sure we're going to get to it when we get this episode. So we're not going to belabor this point. But make sure that you are disclosing to your medical doctor all the medicine that you're on. Yes. Oftentimes, doctors will – this happened to my mother-in-law. She went from North Carolina to Texas and then from Texas to Arkansas. So she was in several different states, and she went to different medical doctors. And they didn't update her charts on what she was taking. And so she just thought that they knew that she was taking certain medications. And what happened was that she was on different medications for different reasons. And these different medications were affecting her body adversely. And she was having depression. And she couldn't figure out why. Because of the different medications that were affecting each other. And once she got to the place where she said, hey, these are what I'm on, they began to wean her off. They helped her out on some different things. She's doing a whole lot better now. But because she didn't – not of her fault, but the doctors weren't communicating with each other. These medications were giving her a symptom of what they defined as medical illness. And so oftentimes this can happen from medication that we're on that we just don't know that they're adversely affecting each other. But we'll get to that in a different episode. 100% correct. 100% correct. The one thing that they do have on there is complementary and alternative therapies are also increasingly being used. And I think that's something that also needs a biblical examination with a biblical worldview. But I think that it's probably becoming more helpful than what they say is their combination of talk therapy and medication. My opinion, you can disagree with it. But then it says this. And I know I've been critical of this article. But this is something I agree with. It says lifestyle changes. Self-help can improve one's mental state with this. Lifestyle changes such as good nutrition, exercise, adequate sleep with good hygiene can support mental health and recovery. And I just want to say 100%. You know what? If you're struggling with certain things like anxiety or depression, look at your diet. I'm not saying that's the cause. Don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that's the cause. I'm saying you probably need to check into it. If you're struggling with anxiety, how many energy drinks are you drinking? How much sugar intake do you have? It affects your body. And your body can affect your mental state. John, did you say how many tier wines are you consuming? Well, come on. Is that what I heard you say? He's getting me. He's getting me. All right. So that finishes up that section. Yeah, nothing to see here. Charles Hodges, I'm going to read this phrase and then I'm going to turn it over to James as we start working through some help here. And that is, being compassionate does not require that we agree with the idea that a chemical imbalance leads anyone to a lifelong struggle with depression. Last summer, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health said, now this is a quotation. This is not a fundamentalist Christian. This is not a believer in any state. This is the head of the National Institute of Mental Health said, there is no biochemical imbalance that we have ever been able to demonstrate. What we think about are changes in circuitry and how the brain is processing information. To say that we must agree with a theory, Charles Hodges says, whose scientific basis is unclear in order to be kind, tenderhearted, and love one another is simply not true. We can be compassionate and we must be without regard to labels. All right. So let's move to some things, James, that we are going to call some hope and help in the area of mental health and mental illness. Yeah. First, we've got to look at what is true. We've got to examine the truth in each situation, and then we're going to go through how we can be helpful. The first is, what are you going to believe? Are we going to believe a theory or are we going to believe truth? And we can cite a couple of verses here. Psalms 19, 2-11, John 17, 17. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And so what are we going to believe? No, wrong verse there. John 17, 17 is sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Is truth. Okay, so what is the truth? It is God's word. Now, again, medical science, if it's proven data, if it passes the scientific method, I'm all for it. Yeah. But I'm cautioning you and challenging you to think critically about this because a lot of the things that come out in the mental health arena is theory. Yeah. It's theory. And a lot of times it is, okay, let's see what happens when we throw this chemical into it and see how it changes. And it's just theories working through things. Yeah. And so we've got to be careful of those things. Okay. Next one, never call sin a disease. When we begin to call sin a disease, then we begin to miss the fundamental attribute of what the gospel is. The gospel is we've done wrong. Jesus came to die and to redeem us from those sins. We turn and repent and we get back to where God has originally intended mankind to be, honor and glorify him. And when we call sin a disease, then we don't need to repent of it. And we live in sin and we don't ever turn from that sin. As we just went through anxiety, when we begin to look at anxiety and we call anxiety a disease and we don't address it as sin, we can't repent of it. We can't see the wrong of it and to turn from it and to turn from that worry or anxiety in order to receive forgiveness and freedom that Christ offers and gives to us. I agree completely, but let me just – just in case somebody is listening to this episode that didn't listen to the anxiety episodes, don't read into that. Go listen to what we said in that. We're not labeling 100% of anxiety as always sin. Absolutely. But the vast majority of the times, I think that it does fall into that category of that. So we need to watch that. But on the very – on the other end, we have to also be careful, James, that we never call anything a sin. The Bible does not clearly identify as a sin. Right. And that is huge. That is huge. That's where a lot of legalism takes place because they're quick to call something a sin that they think is unwise. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the book of Proverbs a lot of times, but don't call anything sin. The Bible does not clearly identify as sin. Yeah. Very much so. And then the last thing we're going to say before we get into our helpful hints are always look for pathology if you're going to label something a disease. If you're going to say this is a disease, where is the medical evidence backing it up saying that this is a disease? You talked about last episode, sleep apnea for me. There was a medical study done. I had to go into the hospital. They hooked up about 14 different diodes to my brain and to my heart and everything else. I slept. They observed what was going on. There was medical evidence showing that there was sleep apnea happened where I would stop breathing. Okay. There was an evidential factor based on the baseline of what they could test. And then they said, okay, you've got this. We need to put you on this machine. I mean, set at this pressure, set at this amount of time, all the things that need to be done. They went through and they set it up based on the test that was done on me. And so there was a label that was given because of a verifiable evidence that was given. And so if we're going to cause something a disease, make sure there's pathology for it that can be treatable based on the medicine that God has been given to us through the doctors that are around us. Okay. Okay. So now we're going to look at a passage in 1 Thessalonians 5, 14 and 15. It says, verse 14 of 1 Thessalonians 5, And this gives us a little bit of a good instruction of how we should approach those struggling with mental struggles. You know, admonish the unruly. You know, there's times where if they are allowing whatever their mental struggle is to blatantly sin, we need to admonish them. Yeah. We need to admonish them. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Absolutely. Not leave them there. Not condemn and admonish and leave them there. Yeah. But we cannot ignore the admonishment. Yeah. Encourage the faint-hearted. These are those who are normally sad. These are those who cannot normally encourage themselves. The ewers of the world, right? The ones who are always seeing, not the glass half full or half empty. The glass is basically dry. There's nothing in it. Even though the glass has something in it, they just see everything in the world as negative. The negative Nellies in the world. These are the ones that we need to encourage. We need to bring them up. We need to uplift them with Scripture. We need to give them the hope and the help of the gospel in every area of their life. Because they're not going to do it naturally. They're not wired that way. They're not wired to see the good things in life. And so we are there to encourage them and to help them in their journey. Yeah. Encouragement is something that we need to be doing to one another. It's one another of the church. It says, help the weak. Help the weak. This is something I've been very convicted about. And that is encouraging those with disability ministry. We need to be practicing that. We need to, you know, the disenfranchised, the minority, a lot of times are those who are what we call physical handicap, mental handicap. And we need to have compassion and a ministry to them and care for them as Jesus did. Yeah. Yeah. Next thing we got to do, and this is probably the one that I struggle with the most, just to be honest with you, be patient with all. Patience is something that I don't have a lot of. And God shows me that often having three kids, having to deal with patience. And so having patience with all, there are times where people don't progress as fast as we want them to or don't understand things as quickly as we would like them to. And it takes time to deal with some things that are going on in our lives. And people were patient with us at one point. And so we have to be patient with everyone that we come in contact with when it's trying to understand new things, when it's trying to understand something greater than what we can even understand with our physical, mental capacities. We've got to be patient and give patience to everyone if we are wanting to be helpful in the middle of when someone's going through a very, very difficult time in their life. And then see that no one repays anyone evil for evil. And I like this because if you're going to be involved in church and you work with people or you're a people helper or there's people even in the body of Christ that have a mental struggle in your family, a lot of times they're probably going to rub you the wrong way. They're probably going to, because of their mental struggles, sin against you. And so we need to remember this of not paying evil for evil because they did this to you. You're now going to get them back or you're going to be like, I'm done with them. Yeah. Okay. So we need to remember this. And this leads us from not repaying evil for evil to the other part of that, which sort of finishes verse 15. Yeah. Yeah. Seek to do good to others in and outside of the body of Christ. Yeah. Not just those who are of the household of faith, but to everyone that we're around, seek to do good for others. And so often we fail to do this. We seek to do good for ourselves, but we fail to seek to do good for others. And if we are going to be like Christ, Christians, then we need to seek to do good for others. I'm often, you know, I try to always think in my mind how Jesus responded when those who were coming to crucify him. As Jesus was there in the garden, as his disciples began to flee and began to betray him and began to leave. And then the soldiers that came to arrest him, Peter pulls out that sword. He doesn't show the love that Jesus just said that you should show love. Take him into trial and to crucify him. He goes and he heals that person. He takes his ear. He puts it back on his, this guy's, the guy that's about to arrest him. And he shows him love and kindness to the one that's going to be destroying his life. And so we need to take this example. We need to say, how can I show good? How can I seek the good for others so that we can show Christ to those who are around us? Very good word. Very good word. I'm going to close with Charles Hodges and this, what we've been, his notes that we've been talking about here. Recommends three books if you want to go deeper. His book, Good Mood, Bad Mood, Help and Hope for Depression and Bipolar Disorder. A book by a guy named Wakefield J. Horowitz. Or J. Wakefield and A. Horowitz called The Loss of Sadness, How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sadness into a Depressive Disorder. And then a book called Blame It on the Brain by Ed Welch. We recommend those to you. And we encourage you that if you are struggling with any of these things and you're to seek your pastor or if that's not an option to you or the body of Christ, then go to biblicalcounseling.com. And there's a tab at the top called Find a Counselor and you can type in a zip code and you can find a biblical counselor in your area or close to you. Maybe you can reach out, even do Zoom if there's no one close to you. But we encourage you to do that. And I think we're going to wrap this up. We have an interview coming up next time. And so we're excited about looking forward to interviewing that. And I encourage you, I highly recommend all of Dr. Daniel Berger's books, which we believe we're going to be interviewing him in our next episode on this subject. James? Yeah. And to piggyback on what John said, I've had several people reach out to me from when we met up at the Missouri meetup and even at the Danville meetup and said, Hey, are you guys, you know, are you guys there to help as far as if I've got questions, if I've got some family member that needs help? By all means, reach out to us on our social medias. Our emails are on our website. You can find them there. You can email us directly. And we're wanting to be someone who can help, someone that's going to be giving encouragement. If you don't have anyone around you, either through a text message or a Zoom call, we are more than willing to jump on and help in any way possible. And you can go back. I don't know what episode it is, 30, 35. I gave my cell phone number out. You can find it and message me directly, and I'll respond very quickly to you. And so hopefully that'll be a blessing to you. I do love receiving random texts, John, from people that have went back and listened, and they're like, Hey, I want to see if this is actually real. And yeah, I do respond. And so reach out to us, and we'll be a blessing any way we can. Absolutely. Thank you all for listening. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, share, and like it and share it on your social media platform. And until next time, to God be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. That has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed the content of the podcast, please do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing the podcast on whatever podcast platform you listen to. 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