Pyschopatha..waa??

Words of warning: I like to tell stories…

So last night a friend came over as I was working on moving my stuff in my new bedroom and bathroom (finally getting my own room!) and she came across my DSM-IV TR. Not a strange thing to find in a room of a psychology grad student. If you don’t know what the DSM is, it is a diagnostic manual for diagnosing mental disorders. Well we then started a conversation on disorders. She’d give me a situation, and I’d go look up my first guess of what kind of disorder that person could have and look up the symptoms and kind of do my own diagnosis with what limited information I had. I have to say, it was kind of fun. Well, I’m kind of getting off subject here so I’ll get back to my point of the story. At one point the question was asked about if most people could be considered as having a mental disorder. Luckily I had just had a test the night before over that kind of information so I had an answer. Of course I cannot remember the exact percentage listed in my psychopathology book, but I want to say around 80% of people could be diagnosed with a disorder at one point in their life. This doesn’t mean that the person still is suffering from the disorder, or that the person sought professional help. What it does mean is that it is normal to go through spurts of anxiety or depression. Most of these disorders have a precipitating event that brings it out of us. For instance, the stress of school for me is causing a lot of anxiety for me. Some of the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include easily fatigued, irritable, unable to concentrate (mind going blank). I often find myself more irritable lately, also very tired all the time, and often my mind goes blank and I have a hard time concentrating on a task. I am sure as soon as the semester ends or slows down, I’ll be back to normal.

What I am getting at is that if we didn’t have times of depression or anxiety or any other disorder, we wouldn’t be human. We are vulnerable; we are affected by situational factors and our environment. As Christians, we have a tendency to think that if we had enough faith or were “real Christians,” we would not suffer from things like depression. In my devotion for today, the title was “Taking the Initiative Against Depression.” The verse was 1 Kings 19:5. Of course to fully understand the situation the verse is describing, I read 1 Kings 18 too. The story is about Elijah and how he challenged the Baal prophets and of course the God of Israel is the winner. Elijah ends up killing all of the prophets and then flees into the wilderness. This then brings us to chapter 19. In 19:4 Elijah had enough, “…He begged the LORD, ‘I've had enough. Just let me die! I'm no better off than my ancestors.’” Even Elijah, a prophet of God came to a point where he was ready to give up. Does that make him a horrible person? Absolutely not. One thing the devotion said really stuck out to me, “If human beings were not capable of depression, we would have no capacity for happiness and exaltation. There are things in life that are designed to depress us; for example, things that are associated with death.” The great thing is that in our weakness, God is strong. He is there to step in during these times, and be our strength when we need it. Sometimes His help doesn’t come in the form of some spiritual miraculous change like *boom* no more depression and you’re suddenly happy all the time. Sometimes His help requires us to do something on our part.

1 Kings 19:5 “Suddenly an angel woke him up and said, ‘Get up and eat.’” Sometimes God requires a simple task.

So my whole point this blog is to say we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for feeling depressed or really anxious. We are human, which means imperfect. The great news is God is strong in our weakness, but we have to remember, we sometimes have to take the initiative to work towards a change.