The couch and the pulpit
How religion and psychotherapy co-exist
No wonder, then, that there has been some residual ambivalence between those who minister to the spirit and those who minister to the mind. Add to that a Western sensibility about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, plus a religious belief in the power of faith to solve what ails you (not to mention the power of sin to make you crazy), and what you often ended up with in Utah a generation ago was confusion and uneasiness about mental illness.
But things have changed, say therapists and clergy, especially in the past decade. "There's much less resistance than I have ever seen from religious people of one ilk or another to sending someone to a psychiatrist," says University of Utah psychiatry professor David Tomb.
He attributes that shift to new brain research — proof that many mental illnesses have biological and chemical components — as well as to a general destigmatizing of mental illness nationwide. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also point to a 2003 book by Elder Alexander Morrison, emeritus general authority of the church and director of the Alliance for Unity. Morrison's "Valley of Sorrow: A Layman's Guide to Mental Illness," which details his family's struggle to help his daughter deal with chronic mental illness, served as permission for many church members to finally admit struggles of their own.
And what kind of help is acceptable for people with mental illness? Will a secular therapist lead a person away from his faith? Is medication the best therapy? Medication plus talk therapy? Should spiritual counseling play a part?
Even mental-health professionals disagree about diagnoses and labels and treatment. "There are people in the psychiatric community who don't even think there should be psychotherapy," says Tomb about psychiatrists who think medication is the only answer. "And there are others who say, 'If Freud didn't say it, it isn't worth saying.' And there are others who feel that the bigger issues are more important than what you thought about your mother. And then there's the cognitive-behavioral group."
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