Depression: Stigma in the Church

Hi. For the Salvation Army, this is Lori Miller.

And I'm Bernie Dake. Welcome to Wonderful Words of Life. Well, Lori, episode one's out of the way.

This is your second episode. Welcome back. Yes. I feel like it's old hat. Not quite.

Not quite. It's always going to be interesting, but this series is pretty cool. What do you think? I love it.

I think it's so important, and it's not something we really talk about just on a day-to-day basis. Cool. When I was looking up statistics, the studies show that about 55% of churchgoers say they've heard about a suicide in their local community almost once a year. Wow. Yeah. And then 32% have had a close family member or an acquaintance who has taken his or her own life. That's staggering to me. I had no clue. And it has actually just touched our family this year that there was a suicide within the Salvation Army's broader family of over a million congregants.

Yes. But it was the closest that had come to me in some time, at least as long as I can remember. And most of the time it comes out of nowhere, seemingly, to those of us who know the people. And for the majority of us, we don't know anything about what they're experiencing until it's too late. Well, for the next four weeks in our series on mental health, we're going to be focusing on depression among different age groups. You know, the thing about mental health for me is I think that there is a perceived stigma. I agree. Yeah. I think particularly when I had no understanding of mental health illness or depression of any kind, when someone would say that someone was depressed, I guess I just felt some kind of way about that.

And I didn't know what that was. I don't know how to deal with that. How do you treat people? Do you treat them differently?

Right. I think it's a silent stigma. I think we're afraid to talk to one another about something that we might see or perceive as a weakness. But, you know, I really feel like the church should be a sanctuary.

The church should be a community. Yeah. But a lot of times what happens with those people who are experiencing mental illness of some sort, we just kind of further marginalize them because we just don't talk about it. I have to agree with you. I think it's something that we're almost afraid to talk about. It's taboo. It is. Or you don't want to be offensive.

Right. So, Gloria, I'm glad you're here because you come with a lot more experience than I have. And this is going to be helpful to our listeners.

I think it's a really important topic, especially as it relates to the church. So if you or someone you love is currently battling with depression, please know that you are not alone. There are people who want to help you. There are people you can talk to. If you don't have a church home, we encourage you to reach out to your local Salvation Army. But if you need someone to talk to immediately, please call 1-800-273-8255. And let us know how we can pray for you. Send us an email at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org or you can call us at 1-800-229-9965. I know that's a lot to remember, but we have people on staff that are specifically dedicated to praying for you. So don't hesitate to reach out. God bless you.

You're the only hope of the world You're the only hope of the world You're the only hope in the world, you're the only hope in the world, you're the only hope in the world. So first let me just say welcome back Aliata. Great, thanks for having me. We're glad that you're here and I wonder now having spoken about being overwhelmed last week if we could talk about this part one for you as you've kind of prepared for our listeners. Yeah, I wanted to speak in terms of shifting from our last session into overwhelmed and how in our society today, because we have this constant flow of going from one thing to another and it's passed down, not only the parents, you see the kids doing the same thing, whether they're overly involved in activities, that we are missing kind of some of the natural clues that are given away when someone is having a mental health episode. So for the purpose of this particular podcast, we're going to focus on depression. And depression is such a vast topic and I want to make sure that we understand that depression is a mental health condition and there's varying diagnosis of depression. You have bipolar, where you have the depressant part, but you have manic part, you have major depression disorder. You also have some people who are affected with seasonal disorder.

You know, we just time changed just recently. So we have some people who get a little bit more depressed when it's cloudy and gray outside versus when it's sunny outside. But I also want to really focus on the terms of how do we distinguish depression from being in a mental health episode versus periods of sadness. So periods of sadness are things that happen in our life, the loss of a loved one, loss of relationship, loss of job, unexpected changes that will cause us to have sad feelings.

I'm hurt, I'm disappointed, things like that. Depression is more characterized as a period in your life where you experience or are exhibiting things where you're losing interest in activities. There's an increase in sleep patterns, increase of not being able to fully explain what is going on, but just having, I've heard clients describe it as just feeling ugh, you know, the ugh feeling. Like there's a lot going on in my head, but I can't really pinpoint to what it is or how I'm feeling, but I'm just going through life, the motions of life, but not really participating in my life. And so if that's one of our listeners, I really want you to know that the first step to understanding if you might be dealing with depression or having some depressive symptoms is really looking at how long you are in that place of what I call ugh, of that unknown, the great unknown.

I've heard it described of just kind of walking through a dark forest with no direction at all, not really knowing if I'm going forward or backwards, north or south, east or west, but just there. And that inability to kind of pull yourself out of it, regardless of if someone is inviting you out. When you have those instances in your life and you see someone, maybe a loved one, who are withdrawing from activities you know they love, then those are kind of the signs that we should be looking for to say that hey, maybe I'm not just having a period of sadness, maybe I am experiencing some depression. And because we are moving forward so fast in society, we as parents, friends, we are not necessarily paying attention to those clues when we see people draw away. I think when we prepared for this and meeting with you, the idea that there could be a perceptible stigma as well.

Absolutely. We perceive that people think of depression as one way or another. There's obviously biblical accounts of depression, and as a Christian organization who believes the Bible to be true, we have to learn from that experience and know that we're not alone. We're never alone. That's a good thing to kind of think of.

And for us, even the most joyous life moments, having a baby, can bring about depression. And these are very real things, and people need to know they're not alone. Yeah, you're not alone. And that's one of the things we'll talk about a little later, that you're not alone. But when you focus on in terms of the stigma that's around depression or mental health in general, I like to use kind of the analogy in terms of if I were sick, where would I go?

I would probably go to my doctor or hospital. If I break my foot, I'm going to the foot doctor, but no one counts that as something negative. But if there's something that I believe that is wrong with my brain chemistry physiologically, there's a stigma to that. There's a stigma for me going to get help or to talk to someone, and why wouldn't there be?

Because in society, every instance where you've seen something that's taken place, I know we talked about 9-11 a little earlier, or if there's been an assassination of a president, or let's look at the school shootings that have happened. Society has overly reported what has come out on these psychological evaluations. So now you tie into someone who did a bad thing, perhaps had a momentary slip in judgment, to they now have a mental health disorder. So that ties into the stigma that we perceive mental health in society, and in the church is even worse. There's a perception in terms of where does depression come from. There's been perceptions where if you're going through something, you must have done something. But what people don't understand is if your family has had a history of depression, you are more than likely to have some episodes of depression in your life itself. And depression often comes after big highs in our life. We can't necessarily always stay on the high roller coaster. You get a promotion, it's good, and then you get in the job and it kind of goes back.

Or your daughter graduates from high school or college, that's a great thing, but now she's about to lead those transitions in life. So there's always this ebb and flow in life that we should expect. So if there's someone who's listening to this podcast and you're experiencing some of the things I talked about are some of the key symptoms of being in a depressive state, and I've noticed there's a difference between periods of sadness and depression. Depression is really lasting a couple of weeks up until months. It might break, but it always kind of comes back. You always come back to that place where you want to isolate yourself and you feel like you're the only person standing in this big black forest.

But it does take someone. And the same thing is for depression. It'll take someone to recognize those symptoms and talk and have communication regarding, can I help you? Adiada, if someone in our audience is looking for help, where can they go? I believe the best place that we should be able to go to is the church, to be able to provide that extra resource and support around an individual who might not be feeling like themselves at the moment.

It could be a momentary thing, but it could be something that needs a little bit more clinical support and help, possibly some medication. And I just want us to know that it's not a stigmatism to get help for yourself. I wish you could be sitting where I am and just see this wonderful, beautiful, godly woman talk about this passion that is hers in mental health. We want you to know you're not alone. And if you are listening to this podcast and you need help, please reach out to someone that you trust. If you don't have a church home, call the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army and all of our communities are normally run by Salvation Army officers who are pastors.

They can get you to the right people that can help you. You're not alone. We're glad that you joined us this week. We hope you'll come back next week. God bless you. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

And we would love to hear from you. Email us at radioatuss.salvationarmy.org. Call 1-800-229-9965 or write us at P.O.

Box 29972, Atlanta, Georgia, 30359. When you contact us, we'll send you our gift for this series. It's totally free for listeners like you, one per household, while supplies last. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite podcast store and be sure to give us a rating. Just search for Wonderful Words of Life. Follow us on social media for the latest episodes, extended interviews, and more. And if you don't have a church home, we invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center. They'll be glad to see you. This is Bernie Dake inviting you to join us next time for the Salvation Army's Wonderful Words of Life. 🎵