Charismatic Christianity and Mental Health

Note: TRIGGER-WARNING. This post describes and discusses serious mental illness, please proceed with caution and reach out to a qualified mental health professional if needed.

As discussed in a previous blog post of mine posted on May 1st, I am scheduled to write a chapter in the upcoming two-volume anthology Our Disability Theologies: Body-Minds & God-Talk to be published by Mad and Crip Theology Press (check them out here if you like - https://www.madandcriptheologypress.ca/). I have recently begun work on the first draft of my chapter entitled The Doubting Disease and the Trustworthy God: The Therapeutic Potential of Faith for Navigating OCD. I thought that I would therefore take the opportunity to write a blog post discussing specifically the intersection of Christians navigating mental health struggles and charismatic expressions of Christianity. My hope is that these brief comments will stimulate charismatics, especially ministry leaders within the charismatic movement, to think carefully and prayerfully about how we might extend the hospitality of God to people who are dealing with these kinds of challenges, and also how we can create space in charismatic churches for the normalization and de-stigmatizing of openly discussing our mental health as we would our physical health.

            The main ‘qualification’, if you want to call it that, for writing a piece in the above-mentioned anthology is to have lived experience of mental health challenges and/or disability. In 2012 I was ministering as a youth pastor in a charismatic church when, seemingly out of nowhere, I began to experience what I did not yet know was OCD. When people think of Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder, they usually associate it with the tendency to be very neat, organized and tidy, and perhaps something like excessive handwashing. It is also quite common for people to say things like ‘I am so OCD about that!’. What most people don’t know is that it is possible to have certain OCD-like traits in your personality without actually having diagnosable OCD, and that OCD can take many forms and become extremely severe, debilitating and even life-threatening.

When I first began developing these symptoms (I clearly remember the exact moment I went from not having OCD to having it) I was profoundly under-equipped to recognize and navigate a significant mental health challenge. Myself and those around me fell into the common Christian traps, and several of the common traps that are specific to charismatic Christianity. I had several people attempt to cast demons out of me, for example. Given that a large component of OCD is extreme anxiety, this practice not only did not help me, but wounded me further and made me even more ill (there is no demon of OCD!). I also had several ministry leaders pray a short, 15-or-so-word prayer over me, (literally) snap their fingers, and claim that I was now “healed and free”. Needless to say, this made things even worse, and this is simply not how mental illness works. I also had the oft-misused 2 Corinthians 10:5 text given to me time and again – “we take every thought captive to obey Christ” (NRSV). This one was particularly dreadful because, not only is this application of this text completely incorrect exegetically (Paul is talking about refuting false doctrine and establishing his true apostolic teaching over against his opponents in this text, not about scrupulously managing our own inner thoughts), this is quite literally the worst possible thing someone with OCD could do.

The upshot of all this, and various other factors, was that in February of 2014 I was taken to hospital via ambulance and voluntarily spent a week in the mental health ward where I was almost unable to walk or feed myself, and slept for around 22 hours a day. It was there that I finally got a diagnosis (severe OCD, anxiety, depression and psychosis). The OCD was so advanced that it had brought on psychosis (not being able to distinguish between what is real and imaginary). The OCD was so bad that one psychiatrist labelled it a 9/10 in severity and one mental health nurse commented that she was surprised I could still walk around. Many years later, my therapist informed me that very few people receive AHS (Alberta Health Services) mental health care for OCD, since OCD is oftentimes mild to medium in severity. She told me that the fact that I did receive significant help through AHS (for which I am immensely grateful) meant that I was “the sickest of the sick”. I was also so ill that at various points I engaged in self-harm, which also prompted the AHS assistance. To add insult to injury, very few people from my life reached out or visited me in hospital. By comparison, I had a friend who a few years later went through a serious physical health issue which included a stay in hospital. That individual was inundated with visits, messages, gifts, cards, prayer groups, and so on. Notice the interesting contrast between how culturally we respond to mental illness vs physical illness. Two powerful questions to ask at this point are ‘Would I have become this sick if I had been better prepared personally to recognize and seek help for a mental health issue?’ and ‘Would I have become this sick if those around me, friends, family, church, spiritual leaders, had been more equipped in this regard?’ I think it is safe to answer, ‘Probably not.’ In short, the extreme extent of this suffering was, to a significant degree, avoidable.

My recounting of these horror stories does not come from bitterness, resentment or a desire to ‘get back at’ the charismatic movement or the church. I love Jesus, the church and the charismatic movement too much to live that way. I have forgiven, healed, and moved on. And I also do not mean to suggest that we should expect every pastor, within or without the charismatic movement, to have a detailed knowledge of how to assist every possible mental health issue. That is just not reasonable! What I am saying is: We can and should do better. God has blessed the charismatic movement with insights that have incredible potential to help people cope with and heal from mental health challenges. The main thesis of my upcoming chapter will be that one of the key reasons I was able to heal from OCD (I now live a completely healthy life, despite still having OCD, because I now know how to manage it so well) is that I came to believe that God had personally communicated to me what my psychologist was already telling me: that I was safe, and that no matter how unbelievable OCD had made this idea, I was not a seriously morally corrupted person who was going to betray and harm those around him. If I did not believe in and practice the charismatic practice of hearing from the Holy Spirit in the manner discussed in my previous blog post (entitled “God Told Me…”), I may never have healed completely from OCD (some people never do).

So, my concluding exhortations to charismatic Christians and ministry leaders are: 1. We have a responsibility to generally educate ourselves (there is the anti-intellectualism again!) on the nature of and best practices around some common mental health issues such that we can avoid the above-mentioned harmful practices, and 2. Although this is not generally the case now, the charismatic church has the potential to make itself a place of healing and hope for those who suffer in these ways. But this will not happen automatically. Let’s take on this challenge, together, and empowered by the Spirit, as a sacred responsibility and act of worship to the God who “is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18, NRSV). The grammatical construction translated “to the brokenhearted” could more woodenly be rendered ‘to the ones whose hearts have been broken’ – the substantival participle is in the passive voice, meaning that the likely gist of the text is that these broken individuals have been harmed by other people. Please feel free to share this blog post, especially with ministry leaders seeking to care for people in these kinds of situations. And be on the look out for the publication of my chapter! The publisher is shooting for Fall 2025.

One final note: When I was in the deepest depths of my illness, there were 2-3 stand-out pastoral leaders who were very much charismatics who made a massive difference and went out of their way to care for me and protect me. I personally am now aspiring to be to others what these individuals were to me, hence this blog post!

Much Love in Christ,

David