Long gone are the days of priests drilling a hole into a person's head to pour in holy water in an attempt to drive out the "demons" that tormented them. Yet, in many Christian circles mental health is still treated with a very antiquated approach. Then comes innovative literature like Christian Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy by Lauren Roskilly. This book is a hybrid that will likely serve as an early forerunner of trends to come.
Our help should really come from the Lord.
The book opens up with a touching personal testimony from Roskilly herself. To my knowledge, this is her debut book and appears to have overflown from her experience with depression and mental health battles. Having achieved a sufficient education and occupational history in the field, Roskilly attempts to fill some of the vacancies in the Christian world relating to our failure to address mental health.
In her efforts, I believe Roskilly will receive mixed reviews. As stated, this book presents a hybrid-method of addressing mental health.
Those with an antiquated and cemented view of mental health will see her approach as overly-spiritualistic, as she recommends the person dealing with mental health struggles take this book as a guide toward self-reflection and meditation - even instructing the reader during one exercise to "Get comfortable and lay your hands comfortably in front of you, open with the palms facing up". The obvious similarities to Eastern meditation will be easy prey to those that see this as an attack on historical/traditional Christian practice.
On the other hand, those who are advocates of religious pluralism (or equally those who support secularism) will criticize Roskilly's fervency to present the Christian worldview as the proper answer to mental health issues. Before the first exercise ever begins, Roskilly advises her readers to take time to reflect on several passages of scripture, and to spend time meditating each day by reciting scriptures and praying. She even says that if the mind begins to wander or become empty, to return to scripture and refocus on the Word of God.
I know my kids need me and apparently Jesus loves me. Why is this so hard?
With those expected criticisms understood, this book does a wonderful job of walking a very difficult path. Roskilly introduces the various approaches to mental health therapy (Psychiatric, Biomedical, Psychological, Social, and Cognitive) before distinguishing what she believes makes her brand of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy unique. This is where I believe she has truly introduced something that will be useful in the future for the Christian community.
When I was completing my undergraduate work I took a class called "Stress Management". The class centered around "mindfulness" and was essentially a yoga class with less exercise and more food. It was all about looking inward to find peace - a common practice that is uniformly anti-Christian in nature. ("For I know that in me, in my flesh, there is no good thing" Rom. 7:18) Roskilly alters this end goal of looking inward and shifts it at an opportune moment in her 5-step process.
Take time, in the current moment, to stop, connect and listen to the Holy Spirit (through meditation on the scriptures).
Recognize how you are feeling and what your body and breathing are doing.
Offer all of these to God through Jesus.
Submit to Him, this means to give Him ALL of you.
Prayerfully ask for His comfort, peace, joy and strength and anything else He wants to offer you freely, according to His plan.
This seemingly obvious shift could truly result in changes to self-help programs and Christian counseling alike. By abandoning the "look inward" approach and embracing the "look to God" approach of scriptures ("Lift up your eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord" Ps. 121:1-2) Roskilly has seemingly rediscovered anew a very old form of meditation.
Without revealing too much of the book (as I will highly recommend you buy a copy for yourself), I want to let readers know that the book is fully intended to be applied to personal use and even used in group settings. My expectation was that the book would be much more instructive and less interactive, not to say that I was disappointed, just surprised. The vast majority of the book is left to be filled in by readers going through an 8-week program of mental self-evaluation and reflection, bookended by prayer and meditation on scriptures. There is even a mental health assessment in weeks 1 and 8 that will allow the reader to see where they stand at the beginning and end of the program. One last factor that is appreciated is that Roskilly regularly defines unfamiliar terms, such as "Positive Modifiers", "SMART Criteria", or "STOPP Technique of Anger Management".
Yorumlar