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“His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity

Some Christian communities may understand mental illness as the result of spiritual causes, such as sin, demons, or a lack of faith. Such perceptions are likely to influence how Christian individuals conceptualise and experience their mental health and enact help-seeking behaviours. This study explo...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lloyd, Christopher E. M., Mengistu, Brittney S., Reid, Graham
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9063734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35519648
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.831534
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author Lloyd, Christopher E. M.
Mengistu, Brittney S.
Reid, Graham
author_facet Lloyd, Christopher E. M.
Mengistu, Brittney S.
Reid, Graham
author_sort Lloyd, Christopher E. M.
collection PubMed
description Some Christian communities may understand mental illness as the result of spiritual causes, such as sin, demons, or a lack of faith. Such perceptions are likely to influence how Christian individuals conceptualise and experience their mental health and enact help-seeking behaviours. This study explores perceptions of depression and mental health help-seeking in evangelical Christianity by using a novel qualitative story completion task. A convenience sample of 110 Christian participants from the United Kingdom completed a third-person, fictional story stem featuring a male with depression who entered his local church. A contextualist-informed thematic analysis illustrated how the disclosure of depression was represented as eliciting negative social reactions, potentially rendering individuals with depression as socially dislocated. Stories suggested that, increasingly, evangelical Christians may perceive a spiritualisation of mental illness, which negates reference to psychological, social, and biomedical representations, as unhelpful. Findings reveal the risks of a solely spiritual aetiology of depression and highlight how existing mental ill-health can be exacerbated if fundamentalist beliefs and approaches to therapeutic care are prioritised over holistic models of care. Methodologically, this study demonstrates the value of a rarely-used tool in psychology—the story completion task—for examining socio-cultural discourses and dominant meanings surrounding stigmatised topics or populations.
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spelling pubmed-90637342022-05-04 “His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity Lloyd, Christopher E. M. Mengistu, Brittney S. Reid, Graham Front Psychol Psychology Some Christian communities may understand mental illness as the result of spiritual causes, such as sin, demons, or a lack of faith. Such perceptions are likely to influence how Christian individuals conceptualise and experience their mental health and enact help-seeking behaviours. This study explores perceptions of depression and mental health help-seeking in evangelical Christianity by using a novel qualitative story completion task. A convenience sample of 110 Christian participants from the United Kingdom completed a third-person, fictional story stem featuring a male with depression who entered his local church. A contextualist-informed thematic analysis illustrated how the disclosure of depression was represented as eliciting negative social reactions, potentially rendering individuals with depression as socially dislocated. Stories suggested that, increasingly, evangelical Christians may perceive a spiritualisation of mental illness, which negates reference to psychological, social, and biomedical representations, as unhelpful. Findings reveal the risks of a solely spiritual aetiology of depression and highlight how existing mental ill-health can be exacerbated if fundamentalist beliefs and approaches to therapeutic care are prioritised over holistic models of care. Methodologically, this study demonstrates the value of a rarely-used tool in psychology—the story completion task—for examining socio-cultural discourses and dominant meanings surrounding stigmatised topics or populations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC9063734/ /pubmed/35519648 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.831534 Text en Copyright © 2022 Lloyd, Mengistu and Reid. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lloyd, Christopher E. M.
Mengistu, Brittney S.
Reid, Graham
“His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity
title “His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity
title_full “His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity
title_fullStr “His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity
title_full_unstemmed “His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity
title_short “His Main Problem Was Not Being in a Relationship With God”: Perceptions of Depression, Help-Seeking, and Treatment in Evangelical Christianity
title_sort “his main problem was not being in a relationship with god”: perceptions of depression, help-seeking, and treatment in evangelical christianity
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9063734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35519648
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.831534
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