STOP THE STIGMA!

 Welcome to Brevis Talk. The talks you are about to hear will be honest, revealing, and unfiltered. Join us as your host, pastor Wayne Whiteside lifts the lid of silence and has conversations about mental illness and health in the church. The goal here is simple. It is to help someone along this journey of life who is struggling. It is to tell the truth to the unsuspecting, and it is to lighten the load of a fellow traveler. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as medical advice or to replace consultation with your physician or mental health professional.

If you are experiencing a medical crisis, call 9 1 1 or go to the nearest Emergency Room. Now, here's your host, pastor Wayne.

Speaker 1 (42s): I wanna welcome you to another Brevis talk. Today our topic is STOP THE STIGMA. I can't say that often enough, and I can't say that loud enough. When we're talking about mental health and mental illness. We absolutely can do more and we must do more to STOP THE. STIGMA. Let me give you some ideas of what I'm thinking of. It's okay in our culture, our society to say you have a broken arm or a broken leg, you go to the Emergency Room or you go to your physician and then it's repaired, but it's not okay in many places to say that your mind is broken, that you are at ill health concerning your emotions and your mind, and these things ought not to be.

There's a term that's thrown around quite often, and it ends up being a stigma to those who are being treated. The idea of someone being crazy, well, I don't even know how to define crazy. What's crazy to me, may not be crazy to you. We live in crazy times. Someone might say, our world has gone crazy. And so that word is just a loose generality that's thrown around. but let me give you some real life stories concerning what I'm talking about.

I had a gr good, good friend many years ago who was working in retail and he was working for a Christian company and he started having panic attacks. Well, he didn't think he was so bad off. And then one day he had one, he thought he had a heart attack, went to the ER room, and the doctor diagnosed him with panic attacks. Would you believe that he paid cash for that visit?

He was so afraid that his employer would find out that he had this problem And, that perhaps it would hurt him in the area of future promotions or even his job at that point. And it was an unreasonable thing for him to think. but nevertheless, he believed it, that if they thought, if he, they perceived that he had some sort of weakness, that it would make him less liable or less able to climb the ladder in this business.

I know of a military man many years ago. He was in the military active and he suffered depression, and it was a very well hidden secret. This is something that can be treated and it should be treated and especially should be treated if someone is in a high stress job like that. And yet he kept it a secret because of his fear that it would off rail his career.

These are just real life stories that I know of. I know there are more and more. I know that when I am counseling with someone and I ask them to go to perhaps be open to going to a psych doctor, a psychiatrist, and I, I've got names that I can give, that I can help refer and perhaps even and sometimes help get them an appointment. One of the number one things that I almost always hear is where are they located?

These individuals want to go to another city, a distant place, so that they may not run into someone, possibly run into someone who's being treated for mental illness and someone know that they have this problem. I live in, we live in north Louisiana and there's Shreveport to our west and to the east is Jackson, Mississippi. And I happen to know doctors in both of those cities, and many of these people are more than willing to travel a trip of several hours for treatment rather than staying local.

And we have some good local doctors, but that is the cause that the cause of that is the stigma that is attached to mental health and mental illness. And again, these things ought not to be. Well, another part of that stigma is that there are people who don't know much about it, but they do have their mind made up that if someone is struggling in this area, some will think that someone is simply weak, that you need to have a stronger self will, and you can pull yourself up and out of clinical depression.

Well, let me assure you that if it indeed is clinical depression, you cannot in and of yourself pull yourself out of this. It is not simply an act of the will of getting tougher or someone applying tough love to you, so to speak. And yet these people who don't know and don't understand this will simply say, well, he or she is a weak person.

It makes them suspicious of people and it is ruin us to friendships and in family settings sometimes because people don't understand these things and they don't understand how prevalent they are. And it's better to ostracize, it's better to label. It's, I say it's better, it's not better. It's easier to ostracize, it's easier to label and to take a two, two or three steps back.

But that helps no one, it helps. It doesn't help the person who is suffering from the illness and it doesn't help you in that relationship or in future relationship. So we really need to be educated about stopping the stigma. And I wanna say this, be a part of the solution, not a part of the pollution. The solution is talk about it. You know. They say that Light is the best antiseptic.

And by talking about it and putting light on this subject that it is a treatable problem, then we do much good in talking about it. Be the first to confess. If you don't know, I don't know much about this, but be open to being educated about it and learning. Do not have a closed mind. And one of the things that I've heard and heard recently, sec, not me, but secondhand recently in counseling with someone, is you just need to get in your Bible more that the problem is your Bible study.

You're not. You're not where you need to be in your Bible study And. That absolutely is not the case in many individuals. They love the Lord. We should not question their love for the Lord. Many of these, these people love the Lord. They surrender to him. They want his will in their life. And they are in bi the Bible. They are in Bible studies. And so that is very damaging and very crushing to someone when it's not true.

But again, you cannot wheel yourself out of these things. And so we need to STOP, THE, STIGMA and learn to listen. God gave us one mouth and two ears. That means we should be doing twice as much listening as we are talking. And so again, let us be a part of the solution, not the pollution. Talk about it, talk about it among believers. Talk about these things at work and in your family.

And I promise you this, there is some someone in your life that is struggling and suffering from mental illness and you don't even know about it, and they perhaps do not feel that they could ever confide in you. It is so prevalent. It is everywhere. And the church, especially the church, must be open to being a place of healing, a place of empathy, a place of love, and a place of solutions.

God bless you. We'll talk again soon,

Speaker 0 (9m 46s): And. that concludes our broadcast today. Please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Plus, check us out at our Facebook page or brevistalk.com and take a look at our blog and remember, be kind. Always be kind.