One of the first things (of many) that patients of Bipolar or mental illness have to deal with is the reality of their illness and situation. It can be just as hard for the families as well because of the somewhat invisible nature of the inner workings of the mind. There are plenty of places where one can research the dynamics of mental illness and how certain chemical imbalances in the brain can cause behavioral modification. The problem is that there are very few (if any) reliable methods of detecting and recording these chemical anomalies so the primary method of diagnosis is the observed behavior of the patient. This is problematic on many levels but let me just mention a couple: • It creates a possibility of misdiagnosis on the part of the Doctor and an extreme possibility of rejected diagnosis on the part of the patient. If a doctor said to you, “you are mentally ill; you will always be mentally ill; you will have to take medication for the rest of your life to cope and to function; YOU ARE NOT NORMAL!” How would you react to that? This is the reality of so many people who hear this diagnosis. They don’t want to believe it. The families don’t want to believe it. No one wants to believe it; and to complicate the matter there is no blood test, or chart, or X-ray to confirm the Doctor’s diagnosis. A diabetic also doesn’t like their diagnosis, yet they can see variants in their blood that validate the condition. The cancer patient can see tumors and the paralytic can see an X-ray of their severed spinal cord. Disbelief therefore is the natural reaction to the initial diagnosis of the mentally ill patient.
Sadly, even after the patient has come to terms with their fate, there are friends and family members who can’t accept the reality of a life sentence at the lips of a Doctor. The contention of members within the family and the denial of some can be serious contributors to the patient’s lack of healing and lack of an atmosphere that encourages well-being. Along the same lines is the contingent of the population that does not believe that mental illness even exists. These people are primarily the Religious Right and their argument goes like this. “Anything that is not visibly evident is not therefore a viable illness or condition. If one has behavioral issues, then the problem is not one of the organic body, it is one of the soul”. “It is just flat out sin and nothing else! These people need Satan purged from their heart and then they would be fine!” The first thing that scares me about this position is that this is exactly what many of my spiritual mentors taught me to believe up until 8 years ago. Lord, forgive me for those I have falsely judged in the past. My wife and I are both devout to the Christian Faith and we have had to deal with this belief that mental illness does not exist; that it is merely a veil for sin that has not been purged in a person. “They need to beg for forgiveness, not medicine.”
This position is compounded by the seemingly “sinful” behavior of the patients in many cases. Once the illness impairs their judgment, particularly in the case of Bipolar, their actions can certainly appear as that of a “sinner” rather than the actions of someone who is ill. This phenomenon could be compared to a high priced, well-engineered bicycle wheel. Despite the quality of the wheel, if just one spoke is even the slightest bit out of adjustment, where the tension has become somewhat less than perfect; then the wheel will start to wobble and if left unattended and uncorrected the wobble will get worse and worse until the wheel is no longer functional. It gives off the appearance of being a “bad” wheel when the only problem was that the “good” wheel needed some adjustment. Similarly, when patients with Bipolar get a chemical “wobble” in their brain, they tend to lose judgment which causes them to engage in behaviors that might look like they have a moral root rather than a problematic symptom of an illness. Our family has certainly struggled with these very issues.
As Christians, we believe in good and evil but we also believe in mental illness. We have experienced it first hand and we believe in its effects on the patients touch by its curse. And no, we can’t see the results on an X-ray but we can see the tangible effects on the life of Justin. There are so many things in life that we can’t see and that we can’t prove, yet we know they exist because their truth is manifested in outcomes that might someday be accompanied by evidence that we can better understand.