Blessed are those who mourn…

In Part I, I quoted an article written by CNN’s Mental Health Expert, Dr. Charles Raison who candidly and sincerely shared his thoughts about preteen depression and I deconstructed from there.  Here in part II, I’m back for more:

Back to the seesaw. Imagine that what we want to do in life is keep it balanced. When it becomes unbalanced and one side tips to the ground, that’s equivalent to getting depressed. You can see that it can become unbalanced from either the side of what’s going on in a person’s life (i.e. the environment) or from the way a person was born in terms of personality (or more technically in terms of “temperament”). A bad environment is like a heavy load on the seesaw. The worse the environment, the more likely the seesaw is to become unbalanced, no matter what kind of temperament a person has. Said another way, there are things that can happen that are so bad that almost anyone would become depressed.

Though the doctor goes on to apologize for his overly simplistic explanation for depression, he truly seems to believe the nuts and bolts of what he’s saying: depression is merely an imbalance due to poor environment and/or a poor inherent disposition. Got too much negativity?  Well, at some point Dr. Raison believes you’re going to be “unbalanced,” i.e. depressed.

Now our thoughts and emotions are chemical on a purely material level, but that hasn’t stopped psychologists from being baffled as to why drugs can only improve rather than cure many mental illnesses. There is that ‘mystery of soul’ to be reckoned with that has defied mere chemical alteration that Prozac and Zoloft can only gloss over but never destroy.  Over time, the heart of the soul always seem to rise up and scream from behind the veneer these drugs leave behind.  This is why psychologists are generally uneasy with embracing a purely material answer (drugs) to mental illnesses – even though the soul is interwoven with the chemicals being passed through the synapses of our brains and electrical chemical signals being sent from our brains to other organs in our bodies that respond to the emotions they spark and give birth to the thoughts and memories of our mind. And Dr. Raison even understands this as the conclusion in his article grapples with the balance between changing “bad environments” and administering drugs.

But coupled with his earlier statement, Dr. Raison seems to believe that the most emotionally sensitive people are merely the product of bad evolutionary wiring that need special care and attention in order to rid themselves of their extra helping of psychological weaknesses.  To a point, I don’t doubt or object to this approach at all – as long we’re clear about what we are really dealing with and the root of where it comes from.

So here’s some helpful questions to ask when comparing conventional wisdom to the Gospel when it comes to depression: What kind of soul is Jesus looking for?  Souls that are confident in themselves or poor in spirit?  Is Jesus looking for well adjusted individuals comfortable just as they are or with those who mourn over their sin?  Is he looking for whole people or broken people? Is he looking for confident, assertive, even aggressive people who pursue their ambitions or sensitive people who get out of the way?

And which soul is a better receptor of grace?  Is it the heart and mind wired to be tender to the evils of the world and inexplicably restless when it comes to filling itself up with the pleasures it offers, or the heart and mind that is perfectly satisfied with planet earth – imperfections and all?  I’m not saying that the path to Jesus is clinical depression.  I am saying that the traits that we would ascribe to those sensitive persons who are susceptible to being “unbalances” (as Dr. Raison puts it) are the same traits we see praised in the Gospel.

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