Mental Health, Movies & The Prophets

May is mental health awareness month, although there are neverending items on the calendar.

It’s Memorial Day weekend, so it’s also time to remember.

Yesterday was also national hamburger day. We love to celebrate.

As stated many times before, I’m licensed with the state of Michigan to offer marriage, couple, group, and individual counseling because my experience and education is recognized by the state.

If you’re in Michigan and in need of online therapy, I have been providing therapy for a couple years now with an online option.

I also have many residency hours I’ve transferred into Michigan from another state.

diagnoses

One diagnosis is one thing. Sometimes families/friends do become experts in a diagnosis because of a loved one.

However, diagnoses plural is quite another.

In America, there’s the DSM. Providers who accept certain types of insurance are required to diagnose in order to receive remuneration, unfortunately. This poses an ethical dilemma for some, maybe not others.

For instance some family/group therapists absolutely refuse to diagnose an individual without seeing the whole family/group in counseling together.

different modalities

In Europe there is the ICD. My supervisor said he diagnosed over there and was familiar with it.

It has more diagnoses than the DSM. One diagnosis is General Unhappiness Disorder. He said some people just use this diagnosis until something leads them to believe otherwise, or they often never change the diagnosis.

I think with diagnoses in America, we may be taking ourselves too seriously, and forgetting about the elasticity of the brain and neural system.

To lighten things up, here are some quick movie/reading recommendations that offer perspective.

Hichki

This week I watched “Hichki,” a movie about a lady school teacher overcoming all odds somewhere in the Indus-Pacific.

Her isssue is Tourette Syndrome.

The era is yesteryear, some time when little is known about it, or possibly even about mental health.

I won’t share too much of the storyline, but I will encourage you to watch it, even though you’ll have to read English subtitles. It’s PG at the most, although the rating system may be different.

Her courage and determination is palpable despite the odds. There are various ways the “tics,” or what-have-you, of Tourette’s play out so please do not expect to ever become an expert on a topic like this because of a movie, how silly.

Nonetheless, her excellent performance gives us a glimpse of her struggle that is very real and compounded by stress.

It’s loosely based on a related autobiography of a teacher.

reading Biblical prophets, prophecy, and promises

There are academic works that deal with this. Yale has released some information recently.

However, I have nothing that wouldn’t sound offensive, especially on Sunday.

In all reality, I would like to read what someone who is an expert on the DSM or the ICD has to say about a prophet like Samuel, if the scholar is equally a Biblical scholar.

That’s the rub. Can we find scholars who are Christians, who are cross-trained?

Samuel thinks outside of the box to say the least, even standing out from OT prophets in my opinion.

Would you diagnose him?

I really don’t even like it when preachers try to size up the personalities of the disciples.

However, the prophets are a curious lot, if you’re looking at the Bible through the lens of mental health. Are they crazy or weird? Be careful because our future is still spoken of by them, like it or not. They speak as the voice of God into their times, and they’ve offered vital clues for the people of God until the clock stops ticking.

another movie night

Friyay is dinner and a movie night, fam tradition!

Dinosaur from Disney+ for the little one!

Sometimes I just like to watch trailers even if the movies aren’t free.

This week I really liked Hichki.

Friday I thought I’d try something else about mental health:
50 First Dates
Still Alice

Then I watched trailers for:
Entrapment
The Sting

Is this how people pick movies now?

I think I’m settling for:
The Adjustment Bereau

mental health movies

In all of the above movies there is a mental health issue, a systems issue, or a sociological issue if you think about it.

I really love The Adjustment Bereau for countless reasons.

However this is a perfect example of people who are pushed to make life changing decisions under duress.

To read: “How to Prove a Contract Was Signed Under Duress” CLICK HERE

For those who’d like to watch the movie Theologically consider how the pendulum swings between extreme Predestination and Open Theism. This will definitely make the movie more enjoyable for you.

Furthermore, we may consider the movie to be in the paranormal genre, and therefore dismiss it.

I would counter that we may not be considering our own Christian historical worldview, or the current worldview of the majority of Christians globally. Can we dismiss the otherworldly elements, even if we aren’t comfortable with the movie’s Theological presuppositions?