Christians, Pastors, and Mental Health Treatment

Desiring God, the ministry of John Piper, continues to receive negative reaction to a Twitter message about mental health posted on Tuesday (2/6/18).


Many readers, including me, felt the tweet implied that the cause of mental illness is a lack of faith. However, many believers experience emotional distress and many non-believers don’t. The tweet and later effort to put it in the context of a 2007 article fell flat. Adding insult to injury, Desiring God had nothing else to say, leaving the tweet in place and offering no apology. As Phoenix Preacher Michael Newnham wrote, “Being a Christian Celebrity Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry…”

Being a Christian Celebrity Doesn’t Mean You Are an Expert at Everything

Some of them think they are. And their fans often put them in that role. I rather like what Newnham has to say about his approach as a pastor to mental health concerns.

As a pastor my “expertise” is limited and I’m as broken and fallible as you are.
In some ways, maybe more so.
I don’t know how to fix your sex life, raise your kids, manage your finances, or treat your ills.
I’m not even that good at what I’m trained to do.
My job is to help you grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, just as I am growing as well.
My job is to be present when you need me, to the best of my ability.
My job is to pray with and for you, that God will give you wisdom about the problems that are beyond my scope of expertise…which are most of them.
Sometimes, my job is to give you a referral to someone I trust can help you.

This is really good. Keep all of the Desiring God ministries and give me men and women like this in community churches everywhere.

Therapy Helps

The Desiring God tweeter should meet some Christians who found help from psychotherapy. I am the first to acknowledge (and call out) the shoddy and quack therapists, but I also know that therapy can be a lifeline to people when everything else (including the church) has failed them. Read the response of this Christian blogger with who responded to a challenge about therapy.

Last night I read a disturbing sentiment on someone’s blog. In effect, she said she doesn’t support therapy because there is nothing therapy can provide that can’t be provided through a relationship with God. This disturbs me because so many Christians feel this way or similar, and it is essentially a way of saying that all mental illness or emotional issues are a result of a broken relationship with God or a failure of faith. I can’t tell you how hard it is to hear this; I lost many friends who made this conclusion out of ignorance or arrogance.

In response, she wrote:

The first thing to be said here is that yes, God can and does have the ability to heal anything. Read this blog if you doubt that. Yes, my hard work and new variations of meds and finding the right (and strange) combination of meds matters, along with many other things like vitamins and diet and sunshine, but that I’m in remission (partial or otherwise) is nothing less than a miracle.
However, I firmly believe that God uses tools to heal. For those with mental illness, one of those tools can be therapy. I don’t know a single therapist (even the really bad ones I’ve had and there were several of those) who have claimed to be a cure for anything just by themselves. Instead, therapy provides support while you do what needs done, just like a cast supports a fractured arm.
Bipolar illness damages my relationship with God. I am not good at connecting with anyone and I need help to do so. That’s one place therapy comes into play. I also need help with things that should be basic. Reading the Bible and understanding it is one of them. I can’t follow a “real” Bible. I use a children’s version when I can, but truthfully that’s not a lot. I just have a lot of emotions surrounding the inability to handle the real Bible that make it hard to stomach my watered down one. Maybe a better person wouldn’t struggle with the anger that I can’t be an adult in all things, but I do. It’s a side effect of an illness that took away so much of what I wanted in life.

This person didn’t get sick by staring in a mirror, nor was the remission due to looking away from it. The Desiring God-style advice yielded frustration and as she said, condemnation from Christians. I urge pastors to put aside fear and reach out to local experts in mental health for referrals when someone in your congregation needs help. Not all encounters will go well but begin seeking referral sources now as you would sources for other medical and health specialties.
A Christian organization which may provide assistance is Christian Association for Psychological Studies.

What Does The International Healing Foundation Do?

Last year, I reported that the International Healing Foundation struck gold in 2011 with an apparent donation of over 500k. Some of the money was used to promote a video for schools.  However, salad days have returned for IHF as the current 990 form shows they burned through the rest of those funds in 2012 leading to a loss for the year of just over $202k. Another question raised by the 2012 990 relates to the nature of their services in 2012. From the 990, it appears that IHF is claiming that they did very little, if any, counseling.
First, let’s look at the year’s summary as compared to last year.

First, IHF saw a dramatic drop in total revenue from 2011 to 2012. Second, while contributions increased substantially, program fees nearly dried up. Program fees represent client payments for workshops, counseling sessions and any other professional services conducted by IHF. Year to year, it appears that IHF lived off of what they made in 2011. IHF spent 202,393 more than they received in 2012.
Next, examine the description of revenue for 2012:

IHF claims just over $140k in gifts and donations and $27,547 in revenue from services provided. The 990 preparer typed in “seminars/conf/projects” as the source of those funds. I am aware that Richard Cohen traveled around the world to speak and that IHF staff conducted workshops and seminars. However, what about the counseling sessions which IHF touts as leading to change in orientation? According to a former IHF client, the organization charges $125 per hour for counseling. At that rate, it is hard to understand how IHF is keeping a full time counselor busy.

I reached out to IHF Director Christopher Doyle to ask if perhaps they consider client fees to be donations or for any other information which would shed light on these figures. However, he did not reply. Perhaps IHF didn’t report counseling income on the 990. Or perhaps they weren’t very busy providing reorientation counseling services in 2012. If the latter is true, what did they do?

IHF founder Richard Cohen was being cited by Unification Church leader Hjung Jin Moon as being the foremost leader in the UC on homosexuality. Cohen also spoke in Spain at the World Congress of Families conference (not Unificationist).

IHF’s Chris Doyle appeared on the Dr. Oz show to claim that what IHF does is mainstream therapy. While that is a ridiculous claim, it may be true that very little therapy of any kind is actually taking place.

See also:

International Healing Foundation Again Tied To Unification Church

Are All Psychotherapies Equal?

Scientific American yesterday posted a nice summary of the research on effectiveness of psychotherapy.

From the article by Hal Arkowitz and Scott Lilienfeld:

In light of such findings, a search for a therapist should at least sometimes involve a consideration of the type of treatment he or she practices. It is true that ingredients, such as empathy, that cut across effective therapies are potent and that various established techniques are roughly equivalent for a broad range of difficulties. Yet under certain circumstances, the therapeutic method can matter. For example, if a clinician espouses an approach outside the scientific mainstream—one that does not fall under the broad categories we have listed here—you should not assume that this treatment will be as helpful as others.

One of the big puzzles of psychological treatment is why obviously unhelpful methods can lead clients to feel better. As noted in this article, some components of success cut across methods. A reparative therapist, for example, might explain a false set of facts to a client in an empathetic manner which might then provide a false sense of reassurance. Even though the therapy only minimally provides any effect on sexuality, the client may still feel better due to the working of the common factors.

Carol Tavris – Mind Games and a vulnerable public

From the article Mind Games by social psychologist, Carol Tavris:
“A public unable to critically assess psychotherapists’ claims and methods for scientific credibility will be vulnerable to whatever hysterical epidemic comes along next.”(Tavris, 2003, 7).
Just felt like that was important…