Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

It's not sur­pris­ing that so­ci­ety still as­so­ciates men­tal ill­ness with things un­god­ly. From an­cient Greeks to colo­nials, men­tal in­fir­mi­ty was linked with de­mon­ics, witch­craft, prayer and cleans­ing cer­e­monies. At the on­set of my trou­bles, my moth­er em­ployed so­lu­tions in keep­ing with these be­liefs. we vis­it­ed spir­i­tu­al­ists, heal­ing church­es and seers in an ef­fort to ex­or­cise what­ev­er had in­vad­ed the pri­vate do­main of my mind, which in­cur­sion I'd much lat­er de­scribe as "hav­ing tea with demons." Ours was a Ro­man Catholic home set with­in the deep cul­tur­al in­flu­ence of the Bap­tist faiths, Spir­i­tu­al, Shango and In­de­pen­dent, in which all vil­lagers par­tic­i­pat­ed with no ref­er­ence to the dis­tinct man­ner of wor­ship and be­liefs. Then I left an RC pri­ma­ry for a Lon­don Bap­tist sec­ondary school led by a min­is­ter, where we had dai­ly Chris­t­ian wor­ship, de­spite the school's re­li­gious com­po­si­tion. God seemed a rea­son­able in­ter­ven­tion for my swing­ing pen­du­lum. And in­deed, Chris­tian­i­ty gave me friends who have buoyed me through my rough­est sea­sons, the in­com­pa­ra­ble ones be­ing Pa­tri­cia Bethel, Deb­o­rah Mills, and Mar­ilee Darceuil. Among the oth­ers Hal­cy­on Lawrence, Patrick Cae­sar, and Gary Arthur stand out for hav­ing that ex­tra ca­pac­i­ty to make you know you are ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

Re­gret­tably, the church mis­un­der­stood and mis­la­belled my ill­ness with brand­ing which hin­dered the im­placa­ble re­la­tion­ship. The teach­ings of the church that in­ter­sect­ed with the up­swing of my ill­ness con­sid­ered me pride­ful, dif­fi­cult, im­pen­i­tent, with bad at­ti­tudes. One sen­tence which chiefly char­ac­terised my ex­pe­ri­ence was when, in 1992, a fe­male leader said to me, "If I went around church and ask peo­ple about you, as wrong as this sounds, I sure it would be dif­fi­cult to find one per­son who liked you." What? Not like me? I'm in the fel­low­ship of saints, they are sup­posed to like me! Pa­tience and long-suf­fer­ing were com­mand­ed to be ex­er­cised with my short­com­ings. From that ex­pe­ri­ence, I've con­clud­ed the re­li­gious can on­ly serve the men­tal­ly ill if they ed­u­cate them­selves. They must in­struct with the knowl­edge of the life in their charge as one of some­one te­dious be­yond be­lief-touchy, som­bre, lethar­gic, crit­i­cal and de­mand­ing, mis­trust­ful to the point where no re­as­sur­ance is suf­fi­cient. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Prof Kay Red­field Jami­son, au­thor of An Un­qui­et Mind, qual­i­fied the ex­pe­ri­enced as one where,"Sen­su­al­i­ty is per­va­sive and the de­sire to se­duce and be se­duced ir­re­sistible. Feel­ings of ease, in­ten­si­ty, pow­er, well-be­ing, fi­nan­cial om­nipo­tence, and eu­pho­ria per­vade one's mar­row."

For peo­ple whose lives are ruled by moods to par­tic­i­pate in "self­less­ness" and live every day, as Christ did, in a church over­flow­ing with the joys of fel­low­ship, there seems no room for in­fir­mi­ties. In fact, you be­gin to be­have hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly, try­ing to make your ex­is­tence like every­one else's, and smile on days del­e­gat­ed by your body for cry­ing. Among oth­er dis­turb­ing is­sues of the church are harsh­ness, le­gal­ism, in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty and sys­temic prob­lems like abus­es of au­thor­i­ty in or­der to pre­serve a sus­tained cul­ture of con­trol and de­pen­dence on men, rather than free­dom to ex­pe­ri­ence God in an in­di­vid­ual man­ner. There are, how­ev­er, vast op­tions for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, as for heal­ing. Faith-based heal­ing is a per­va­sive be­lief con­sid­ered su­pe­ri­or to or­tho­dox med­i­cine by some, in­so­much that some be­liev­ers would not par­tic­i­pate in sci­en­tif­ic heal­ing. Then there are those who don't be­lieve or prac­tise mir­a­cle heal­ings, ex­pect­ing de­liv­er­ance in greater pri­va­cy by "prayer and sup­pli­ca­tion."

Then there are di­ag­nos­tic and treat­ment so­lu­tions based on west­ern med­i­cine or east­ern re­li­gions. The for­mer ap­proach­es dis­ease by as­sum­ing it is ei­ther phys­i­cal or men­tal, and the lat­ter pre­sumes that the body is whole, and each part in­ti­mate­ly con­nect­ed. These in­flu­ences com­bine to give us the term holis­tic, which speaks to treat­ment of the whole per­son – body, mind, emo­tions and spir­it and which gets sup­port in com­ple­men­tary and al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine (CAM) prac­tices like div­ina­tion, pen­du­lum-swing­ing and more, favoured by those dis­il­lu­sioned with or­tho­dox med­i­cine. I'm a Chris­t­ian. I be­lieve the mes­sage of sal­va­tion and re­spect all things holy in the uni­verse. My per­son­al re­source for cop­ing in­cludes in­ter­mix­ing prayer and scrip­tures along with Ayurvedic and aro­mather­a­peu­tic med­i­cines while tak­ing psy­chi­atric meds. God and I are keep­ing it re­al. But my spir­i­tu­al bal­ance came af­ter en­ter­ing var­i­ous re­li­gious spheres. I've been on mourn­ing ground, prac­tised Brah­ma Yo­ga, had rei­ki, aro­mather­a­py and adult bap­tism at least three times. For the men­tal­ly ill, spir­i­tu­al guid­ance should pro­vide lov­ing, kind sup­port and a will­ing­ness to ex­hib­it com­pas­sion-and must not in­ten­tion­al­ly miss the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the men­tal­ly ill.