Stand on the side of healing

Address mental illness in community

Many of us think of demonic possession as a fictional subject barely worthy of a Hollywood production, but I believe that evil spirits are real and are at work in people and institutions all around us.

Real demons are not cast out by priests clutching crucifixes. They are exorcised from our community through a public commitment to honoring the sacred goodness of every human being.

During his earthly ministry, Jesus is said to have cast out many evil spirits. We are right to question whether any personified evil was actually at work in the lives of those whose symptoms seem to a modern reader more like epilepsy. Although we still tend to ostracize those whose presenting symptoms are hard for us to understand, there is nothing evil or bad about someone who suffers from a neurological disorder or psychiatric illness. If anything, Jesus’ deliverance ministry is characterized by the restoration to the community of those who had been alienated because of their condition.

Reunion and reintegration should be at the heart of our efforts to address mental illness in our community, but the planned closure of the Northwest Arkansas Crisis Stabilization Unit moves us further away from God’s vision for our common life.

After UAMS announced the end of its contract to provide services at the CSU, county officials said this almost certainly means the death of the facility, which in many cases is the only alternative to arrest and incarceration for those who need medical care. We must do better.

I’ve had several encounters at our church with individuals who are in crisis and need the support of mental health providers. Usually, a calm, reassuring conversation helps them relax so that they can seek help on their own terms, but occasionally I must call the police and ask for assistance.

When the CSU is in operation, the police can take someone there to get them the help that they need. When it’s closed, jail often becomes the only recourse. If our goal is the sort of healing and wholeness that Jesus modeled, incarceration only makes the problem worse.

These days most people recognize that mental illness has nothing to do with evil spirits, but our approach to the CSU suggests otherwise. When we respond to individuals with psychiatric illnesses by criminalizing their symptoms, we are not standing on the side of healing and liberation, but of bondage and demonization.

The forces of evil lead us to stand in the way of the healing that our siblings in this community need. Providing health care is expensive and time-consuming. We may not have the power to lay hands on someone and instantly free them from their illness, but we can insist that they be treated like the human beings they are.