Demons and the Psych Ward: A Meditation
Jonathan Avendano, Duke Divinity School
James 2:19
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
1 Corinthians 10:21
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
Mental illness and demons have long been linked within Christianity.[1] More recently, however, modern understandings of mental illness have divorced any semblance of spiritual influence from the psychiatrist’s office. Although such habits allow for more empirical practice and lessen the stigma surrounding treatment, mental health services do a great disservice to their patients in eliminating a mental framework that allows for spiritual intervention. I offer a meditation on expanding medical imagination regarding demons in mental health settings – observing both the good and the bad – and argue that the potential for demonic influence in mental healthcare is further reaching than we allow ourselves to believe. First, I examine the potential significance of associating mental illness with demons and the potential benefits in acknowledging what might be an individual’s real understanding of a lived, internal demonic experience. Second, I propose expanding the perception of demonic influence beyond the internal to include social and environmental pressure. In this way, I frame demons not only as direct internal influencers in mental health, but also view mental illness as a secondary result of demonic influence in a patient’s external environment or social situation. By recognizing these environmental demons, mental health practitioners can assist their patients in cognitively combatting these sorts of spirits. Finally, I ask whether the demons in mental health care are solely the mental illnesses patients struggle with or could instead be attributed to the “powers and principalities” that govern a medical industrial complex that demands that an individual’s neurological makeup be commodified. I explore how such a system is driven by social standards of neuro-normativity, and how psychological and psychiatric interventions pushed by the powers that be can often lead to more pain and loss than an individual’s mental illness ever did on its own. I conclude by considering how these three models of demonic influence can and do interact with one another in mental illness and ask how this expanded imagination concerning demonic influence in mental health could or should affect clinical mental health practice.
1. Forcén, Carlos Espí, and Fernando Espí Forcén. "Demonic Possessions and Mental Illness: Discussion of Selected Cases in Late Medieval Hagiographical Literature." Early Science and Medicine 19, no. 3 (2014): 258-79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24269375.
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
1 Corinthians 10:21
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
Mental illness and demons have long been linked within Christianity.[1] More recently, however, modern understandings of mental illness have divorced any semblance of spiritual influence from the psychiatrist’s office. Although such habits allow for more empirical practice and lessen the stigma surrounding treatment, mental health services do a great disservice to their patients in eliminating a mental framework that allows for spiritual intervention. I offer a meditation on expanding medical imagination regarding demons in mental health settings – observing both the good and the bad – and argue that the potential for demonic influence in mental healthcare is further reaching than we allow ourselves to believe. First, I examine the potential significance of associating mental illness with demons and the potential benefits in acknowledging what might be an individual’s real understanding of a lived, internal demonic experience. Second, I propose expanding the perception of demonic influence beyond the internal to include social and environmental pressure. In this way, I frame demons not only as direct internal influencers in mental health, but also view mental illness as a secondary result of demonic influence in a patient’s external environment or social situation. By recognizing these environmental demons, mental health practitioners can assist their patients in cognitively combatting these sorts of spirits. Finally, I ask whether the demons in mental health care are solely the mental illnesses patients struggle with or could instead be attributed to the “powers and principalities” that govern a medical industrial complex that demands that an individual’s neurological makeup be commodified. I explore how such a system is driven by social standards of neuro-normativity, and how psychological and psychiatric interventions pushed by the powers that be can often lead to more pain and loss than an individual’s mental illness ever did on its own. I conclude by considering how these three models of demonic influence can and do interact with one another in mental illness and ask how this expanded imagination concerning demonic influence in mental health could or should affect clinical mental health practice.
1. Forcén, Carlos Espí, and Fernando Espí Forcén. "Demonic Possessions and Mental Illness: Discussion of Selected Cases in Late Medieval Hagiographical Literature." Early Science and Medicine 19, no. 3 (2014): 258-79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24269375.