By Garth House

Recovery from a serious brain disorder (mental Illness), like recovery from any catastrophic illness, presents a great challenge to the human spirit. So shattering to the human personality are neurobiological disorders, so intense and comprehensive the suffering they involve, so total their attack on every aspect of the sufferer’s life, that the deepest questions of the human condition are raised in the mystery and meaning of suffering, the search for faith and trust wherewith to confront it, and the question of destiny itself. It is therefore not inappropriate to speak of recovery, from such illnesses in terms of a spiritual process. This is not to say that a serious brain disorder implies a spiritual malaise that requires a spiritual or religious remedy. Serious brain disorders are medical illnesses that require medical interventions to alleviate symptoms. But the alleviation of symptoms does not address the devastation and chaos the illness has wrought in the patient’s life, the disruption to the lifestyle and to career, the loss of friends, the social isolation or the stigma associated with the illness. Neither does the alleviation of symptoms erase the indelible memories and deep resonance that the patient continues to carry of the content of those symptoms - the hallucinations, the delusions, the powerful, seductive and disturbing poetry of psychosis. These can make up an entire universe of experience that arises before the recovering person like a great unanswered question, a question that begs to be answered out of the very human longing to find meaning in experience.

The revolution in knowledge of the brain and of the biological basis of brain disorders over the past 30 years left little doubt as to the medical nature of these illnesses. Centuries of misunderstanding and ignorance as to the true nature of mental illness have been relegated to the dust bin of cultural history by these scientific breakthroughs. But if the etiology, and most certainly the treatment, of brain disorders is now known to be a medical, scientific challenge, the broader question of a life-long process of recovery from the trauma of a brain disorder raises issues less narrowly medical and scientific and more broadly spiritual, where this latter term is understood both in the practical tasks of rebuilding a disrupted life and in the deeper questions of the integration of suffering and experience outside the parameters of the "normal" into a meaningful world view. Essentially this is nothing less than the challenge of the human condition itself, from which no mortal is exempt, and which persons with serious brain disorders are both driven and privileged by their illness to meet with an immediacy born of circumstance.

If the distinction between the medical treatment of brain disorders to alleviate symptoms and restore psychiatric balance and the broader process of recovery from the trauma of these disorders is not drawn or is blurred, there is the risk that movement towards a full, meaningful life defined beyond the limitations of the illness itself will not take place. What then occurs is a sort of "biochemical hypochondria", where the individual with the brain disorder embarks on an endless quest for the right combination of medications to set right problems of happiness, meaning, and fulfillment which are properly the fruit, not of the right mix of medications, but of the hard work of the spirit. 

That suffering can be meaningful and even redemptive is an insight common to the spiritual traditions of the West. This is not to say that suffering is good in itself, or that it should be sought out for moral or spiritual improvement. But when affliction strikes and can’t be avoided, from a spiritual point of view it can be seen as the occasion and opportunity for growth. That serious mental illness can be a growth process and an opportunity for the forging of important qualities like patience, endurance, faith and courage, is a radical understanding of what many regard as a completely deleterious and destructive pathology. But for the sufferer a therapeutic approach to serious brain disorders that affirms the importance and authenticity of his or her struggle, that acknowledges in the midst of the chaos and pain of the person’s illness the presence of meaning and the operation of a spiritual power working towards recreation and restoration and healing, for the sufferer such a therapeutic approach grants him or her the dignity worthy of a struggle that in its extremity goes to the heart of the human condition.

A narrow medical model for understanding the phenomenon of neurobiological disorders, while it is important for addressing the treatment of symptoms, is not only inadequate for the broader process of recovery, but in fact it runs the risk of trivializing the sufferer’s struggle. Hallucinations, voices, visions, convictions that one is an historical or religious figure for the person who suffers these experiences to be told it is all a matter of chemical reactions in the brain and nothing more is tantamount to declaring the person is “just plain crazy.” The fact is that such symptoms leave a powerful imprint in the sufferer’s imagination. They resonate with a power and significance that is equal to and sometimes greater than the weight carried by “normal" experience. There is a need, therefore, as there is with all life experience, for the person with a brain disorder to integrate such experience, at some point in the recovery process, into a meaningful worldview.

Of course, the task of integrating experiences outside the range of “normal" consciousness is not without peril and risk. Because the suffering of these illnesses is so extreme, suffering falls so far outside the range of ordinary comprehension, the terrain whereon recovery begins to take place once symptoms have been addressed is in itself inflationary and vulnerable to interpretations that are themselves distorted and off center. The ‘dark’ experiences of clinical and psychotic depression and the wild euphoria of psychotic mania make it difficult for the recovering person who is attempting to make sense of such experience to arrive at a sense of identity and purpose that is marked by the proper measure of humility, integrity, and humanity. 

Here is where the great religious and spiritual traditions can play a vital role, and where the psychiatrist, counselor, and pastor can assist and guide the recovering person as they integrate and heal the deep wounds of their illness. These traditions, and the overarching Spirit of goodness, mercy and healing to which they point, are broad enough to encompass the extremes that are experienced in serious brain disorders. A loving and accepting congregation of faith can restore to the recovering person, through its embrace, a proper and healthy perspective which affirms both the “choseness” of that person for a special “way” marked by the unique extremes of mental suffering and yet at the same time embraces that person in their humanity as a human being worthy of love, healing, and community.

Thus it is that one of the most common characteristics of persons with serious brain disorders–religious preoccupation, obsessions, and delusion–can, if approached with medical expertise and spiritual insight and affirmed as an indicator of authentic spiritual struggle, provide a fertile ground for the growth and development of mature, vital deep and healing faith.

This essay is by Garth House, a staff member of NAMI/Ohio, a veteran of serious mental illness, and the author of two books, Litanies For All Occasions and More Litanies For All Occasions (both Judson Press).