Ministry with Persons with Mental Illness and Their Families, Second Edition

Abstract

As I looked at the title of this book, I was transported back to my days at the School of Social Work in Virginia. One class in particular stuck out in that memory—Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders. It was my class on therapeutic diagnosis. As a dual degree student, I was in the midst of trying to make sense of both the theological and psychological worlds of my education. I was learning and writing about people who often feel broken by their minds, while holding fast to the idea that we are created good. That class would have made a lot more sense to me if this book had been written in 2000 rather than 2012. In the authors’ words, “The purpose of this book is to develop an integrated and interrelated approach that honors the work of the specialists in psychiatry, psychology, and theology” (p. 5). I appreciate this attempt to bring to light issues around mental health through conversations that include pastoral theologians, and certainly I could have used a book like this in my dual degree program. In this collection of conversations between psychiatrists and pastoral theologians, each pairing examines the psychological and theological implications of particular mental health diagnoses. Each chapter begins with case study. From there, a psychiatrist or psychologist discusses the prominent features of a particular diagnosis. This often includes a number of factors that may contribute to the rise of a mental health issue, as well as some of the factors that make people resistant or resilient to their diagnosis. This psychological conversation serves the purpose of introducing the particularities of diagnoses, giving the reader a sense of how someone living with a particular mental health issue may converse, relate, or act. The second half of each chapter takes this information and provides a theological turn. Here, a pastoral theologian looks at this same diagnosis through a pastoral lens; they offer pastoral care ideas; they dive in to the case study and discuss how they might respond; they offer public theological interpretations meant to call the church to a greater exploration of mental health. In short, I believe there is something here for just about everyone, in a plurality of contexts. Each chapter is well-written, even for those not conversant in mental health diagnosis. If anything, they may suffer a bit from a wealth of information that can feel overwhelming to a novice reader. This minor critique applies to both halves of the chapters. In the beginning, the amount of information given about a particular mental health issue may present some challenges due simply