102 Redescribing Depression: The antifeeling that is more than sadness (with Dr. John Swinton)

Is depression a biological and chemical problem? Is it a mental and emotional, or relational problem? Is depression spiritual in nature? As our guest today says, how we describe something is how we see it, and how we see it changes how we respond and act towards it. 

 Dr. John Swinton is Professor in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care and Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen. For more than a decade John worked as a registered mental health nurse and also worked as a hospital and community mental health Chaplain. In 2004, he founded the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability. John is the author of a number of books, including Finding Jesus in the Storm: The spiritual lives of people with mental health challenges.

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Transcript

Introduction: Exploring the Nature of Depression

[00:00:14] Geoff Holsclaw: Is depression a biological or chemical problem? Is it a mental or emotional or perhaps even a relational issue? Or is depression spiritual in nature? As our guest today says, how we describe something affects how we see it and how we see it changes how we can respond and act to it. Toward it today, we were talking about redescribing depression.

This is the attaching to God podcast with Jeff and Sid Holtzclaw, exploring a neuroscience informed spiritual formation as always produced by embodied faith. 

Meet Dr. John Swinton: A Journey in Mental Health and Theology

[00:00:45] Geoff Holsclaw: Today we have Dr. John Swinton, uh, on today. He's the professor of practical theology and pastoral care and the chair in divinity. And religious studies at the university of Aberdeen, uh, for more than a decade, John worked as a registered mental health nurse, and also as a hospital and community mental health chaplain.

And in 2004, he started the university of Aberdeen's center for spirituality, health, and wellness. And disability. He is the author of several books. The one we're talking about today is finding Jesus in the storm. For those of you who are watching on YouTube, I'm holding it up right now. Fighting Jesus in the storm, the spiritual lives of people with mental health challenges.

Dr. Swens, thank you so much for being on with us today.

[00:01:27] John Swinton: No, it's a pleasure. Nice to meet you all.

[00:01:30] Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, well, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a bit, and I've really enjoyed reading your book. You mentioned early on that you kind of have these three streams of formational and vocational aspects that have fed into your current work. You mentioned being a psychiatric nurse, an ordained minister, and a practical theologian.

Could you briefly just talk about how you got into those or some of the history of that?

[00:01:52] John Swinton: Yeah, well, I'd love to say it was a plan, but it's, things just happen in life for me, like, so when I left school, um, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And it's, uh, for a little while I worked as a scientist, but I didn't like that very much. And so I ended up going into mental health nursing, simply because because one of my best friends went into mental health nursing and it turned out to be a really good thing.

It was a really good space for me. And I trained in mental health and I worked in mental health for many years. Then I retrained in the area of intellectual disability or at least that's what it's named nowadays. Loved that too. But then it came to a point where I kind of felt like I'd done as much as I could in nursing.

I felt a call to some kind of ministry. So I left nursing and went to university. Uh, I thought at one point that I'd be a hospital chaplain. That was my kind of plan because it makes sense coming out of a healthcare system and a chaplaincy. I did work as a chaplain for a while but as soon as I got to university for some, whatever reason, my first class in practical theology, I knew that that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to teach practical theology. I'm not sure why, but it just was the right thing. And so I finished my degrees. I got a job down in Glasgow, uh, and then I got a job in Aberdeen and I've been here for 25 years. So I'm, I'm one of the old guard, like everybody else has left or died.

[00:03:19] Geoff Holsclaw: Ha!

[00:03:20] John Swinton: So all the new guys are thinking I'm the wise old man.

[00:03:27] Geoff Holsclaw: Alright, well, so you've been doing this current work of being a Practical and pastoral theologian for you said 25 years

[00:03:37] John Swinton: 25 years. Yeah.

[00:03:38] Geoff Holsclaw: Okay,

[00:03:39] John Swinton: A lifetime.

[00:03:41] Geoff Holsclaw: Well, well a quarter of a lifetime

[00:03:43] John Swinton: quarter of a lifetime. That's true. That's true.

Redefining Mental Health Challenges

[00:03:45] Geoff Holsclaw: Well, so so, uh as the subtitle of your book, uh says you're exploring the spiritual lives of christians with mental health challenges Uh, especially at the beginning you talk about how you don't use Uh, mental illness, uh, you say mental health challenges.

Can you just kind of, kind of explain why it is that you kind of redescribe, uh, even that kind of the nature of the thing we're talking about.

[00:04:08] John Swinton: Well, the term illness automatically assumes that everything within that context is pathological and when that happens people tend to assume that only medical people should be involved because it's illness. So there's a perception of pathology and a perception of, of medicalization. The term challenge I think is just, just helpful because it means that yes, there are difficult things in your life. Yes, there are things that go wrong, but there's also a challenge in there to live well, not necessarily to overcome, but to live well in the midst of your challenges. However, I would also say that people can name their experience in any way they want.

It's not for me to say you shouldn't use Ellen this or you should use this. I use it because it seems to me the most appropriate, but I think people should have the freedom to make that decision in terms of naming themselves.

[00:05:02] Geoff Holsclaw: Hmm. So just, uh, describing things as mental health challenges leaves it more open, um,

[00:05:10] John Swinton: Well, theologically, from the perspective of the church, it means that it's something that we can get involved with. That there's aspects of healing that we can bring to the table that other disciplines can't. Now, Other disciplines are very, very important. So I'm not in any sense against mental health professionals.

Haven't been one for a long period of my life. But sometimes I think when Christians are thinking about mental health, they are not confident with what they bring. And I think the idea of challenges opens up a space where we can be confident we bring something significant.

[00:05:45] Geoff Holsclaw: Well, I love that. Well, I know, um, I'm always, I'm like the very positive person. Like there's no problems. There's just challenges. There's just, you know, there's, there's, there's not a problem. There's an opportunity, right? Which can get a little annoying sometimes, but I think there is something to this where it's calling things.

Um, You know, some people talk about mental health issues, which does sound actually more negative challenge. Sounds a little bit more hopeful, a little more positive. So I like that. Well, you, you talk about, and part of the reason why you talk about mental health challenges is because you're worried about thin descriptions.

Thick vs. Thin Descriptions of Mental Health

[00:06:18] Geoff Holsclaw: You talk about early in your book, uh, that too often we have a thin description of mental health. Uh, mental health illness or mental health challenges. And we also have thin descriptions of like, um, our spirituality in the midst of those challenges. Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by that?

What, what do you mean by a thin description?

[00:06:36] John Swinton: Well, the idea of thick and thin descriptions comes from an anthropologist called, um, Clifford Geertz and he's, he's an ethnographer so when he goes to a different, or when he went to a different context, he really engaged with the culture and he's, he came to this conclusion that there's two ways in which you can look at something.

A thick way and a thin way. So if you take something like, uh, winking so a thin description of winking would be you close your eyelids and you open it again. It is that, but a thick description of winking would be it could be mischievous, it could be romantic, it could be a sign of deviousness. So all these emotional and cultural and contextual things are taken into consideration in relation to what in this case, a wink would look like.

And likewise, if you think about something like depression, so at one level you could say depression is a form of mental illness that causes people to be sad and, and discoordinated in their emotions and they need to take medication. Uh, and it is, it is all of these things like, but I think description would say that, uh, When somebody feels depression, they're lost, they're alienated, they can't find themselves in the midst of this.

The darkness overwhelms them in a way that means that they can't find meaning, can't find purpose, lose a sense of who they are, and very often can't find God in the midst of that. And so it's an existential crisis that people can encourage. So that's a, that'd be a thick description as opposed to the thin.

Now a thin description is right, but But fixed deception gives you the personhood of the individual as part of the experience.

[00:08:21] Geoff Holsclaw: So like, um, A thin description of like myself would be like, well, he's six, three, you know, he's a Caucasian male. He was born in California. Right. You could list some data about me. And, and those things are true. Uh, but like a thicker description would be something about, you know, how long have I been married and who, and the nature of our relationship The children that I have and that I love and that I'm still connected with, even though they're adults.

Right. So that'd be a thicker description where you'd kind of tell those stories. Um, and so you're, you're kind of aiming for that thicker description when it comes to mental health challenges.

[00:08:54] John Swinton: Yes, and the key thing about a thick description is it gives you more options for helping people. If your only option is to give people medication or just to give people therapy, that's a very narrow way of thinking. That does narrow the experience to professionals. But a thick description means that people need friendship, they need understanding, they need to have a place in communities.

So you have a whole range of different options that are not necessarily available if your description is too thin.

[00:09:21] Geoff Holsclaw: So, can we talk just a little bit about what contributes to that thinning description of mental health challenges? Not again, not that we're against some of these kind of establishment or psychiatry, as you say, or kind of other things. 

The Role of DSM and Medical Models in Mental Health

[00:09:35] Geoff Holsclaw: But there is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health.

Uh, otherwise shortened as the DSM. And then now we're in the fifth edition or the fifth version. How does that sometimes play out? Kind of contribute to the thinning of the diagnosis of mental health challenges. It's just that big manual that, you know, people have to know and work with.

[00:09:54] John Swinton: That's right. And people do have to know and work with it. I mean, the problem with the DSM, or the challenge with the DSM, is it focuses on symptoms. It focuses on what has gone wrong with people, brings them into certain configurations, and then acts accordingly with medication, therapy, or whatever it is.

And so it's always looking for the negative. I read a very interesting paper recently, Um, the in, in the US it's A DSM as the criteria in, in the, in Europe, it's the international, uh, uh, it's the World Health Health Organization's criteria that we use here. ICD, uh, and ICD, like the DSM, they go through changes over time and, uh.

Recently, I think it's moved to ICD 11. But they did this really interesting piece of research as they were making the decisions about change and what changes needed to be made. And they talked to people with personality disorders, people with schizophrenia, people with depression, people with anxiety disorders, and asked them what they thought of the criterion that was emerging in the ICD.

And people were said, were said, uh, myth. The big thing that people said is, it's all negative. The only thing that people seem to see is what's gone wrong. So what about the creativity? What about the things that we enjoy in the midst of it? What about the things that make our life worth living? So, yes, you can maybe talk about quality of mental health care, but not quality of life.

And I think the DSM can do that because it thins down to your particular condition, and these other things become secondary too. The focus on the illness.

[00:11:38] Geoff Holsclaw: kind of shifts to not just holding onto the negative is happening even in trauma studies a little bit where instead of talking about, you know, traumatic events, um, now people are trying to emphasize the triumphs even in the midst of the traumas. Like how, what were the resources that you utilize even in the midst of that?

And how can those be triumphs that then we can move forward? So there is kind of that. That shift, uh, in different fields, you also mentioned, so that was the DMS and kind of the problem of diagnosis. And I know a lot of therapists have a love hate relationship with that anyways, um, that, you know, the need to kind of, um, find those.

And there is a kind of a financial, um, aspect to that, that insurance companies, um, will basically need a little check mark next to, well, what's the diagnosis so that then we can fund, you know, the payments so that we can kind of add our statistics. And, you know, that's part of the thinning process is that. that kind of process. But you also mentioned, um, just as a context, cause I think it's just really important, the medical model, which some, or the biomedical biochemical model of mental health and how that sometimes also can add to a thinning kind of a mental health. Could you just talk about that a little bit about some of those kind of problems of, you know, I have this disease or I am this disease or something like that.

[00:12:50] John Swinton: Yeah, well, it's inevitable that, uh, any illness that we have or any condition or any experience that we have, we experience through our biology. So therefore, we're creatures, we're biological beings. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem that emerges when, uh, the assumption is that it's nothing but our biological functions that, that, that this problem.

And so you find that a lot with, uh, certain diagnoses. So if you take something like, um, schizophrenia, right? Schizophrenia is an I am, condition. So, if you have influenza, people don't say you're the flu, but if you have schizophrenia, people will call you a schizophrenic. Now, what else, I don't know what that is.

And so, you're reduced to the size of your, your diagnosis, and everything that happens to you is read through that. And most of the research that people are focusing on is to try to find some kind of biological reason for this. And so, everything is enclosed within your your body. Um, but then you, you look beyond that and you look at some of the research that indicates that For example, people who live in a context of racism or people who are immigrants, people who are under severe social stress are much more likely to develop schizophrenia than people who are not, people who are middle class white people.

And so there's clearly social factors in the midst of that and communal factors that very easily go overlooked. if you just concentrate purely on searching for a biological cause. And that, that really, the thing that frustrates me about that really is, it gets society off the hook because it becomes your problem.

It becomes your, your difficulty. And you can see the same thing in, for example, in organizations, for example, where you, have um, constantly have pushes towards mental health. You know, uh, your mental health matters to us, the organization will say, whether it's a healthcare institution or educational, whatever it is.

Um, and so you have medical mental health weeks, et cetera. But then you look at the structure of the educational institute or whatever it is, and you say, It's not surprising people are depressed and stressed because of the pressures that they're put on by the organization, by the system. But it's much more easy for the system to say, oh, it's your problem, it's your distress.

I'll give you some kind of aromatherapy to keep you calm, than to challenge the actual structural issues that are going on there. So, whilst biology is really, really important, because we are biological creatures, we've got to be very careful that it doesn't become a distraction from the real truth.

difficulties that people encounter and why they encounter them.

[00:15:35] Geoff Holsclaw: Um, yeah. And before we, uh, hit record, uh, you mentioned that some of that, um, those questions are, are the subject of your current kind of work and research. So some stuff's coming out, um, on that. Is that right? About those structural kind of, uh, yeah,

[00:15:51] John Swinton: Yeah, there will be.

[00:15:52] Geoff Holsclaw: exciting. So I'll be looking for that work as we move forward.

Redescribing Depression: Beyond Sadness

[00:15:56] Geoff Holsclaw: Well, so let's move then into, um, depression and redescribing, uh, depression. And you did, uh, several years, I think two years of intensive like, uh, interviews and kind of followups with people with clinically severe, uh, depression, uh, or treatment resistant depression. People call it kind of different things.

Uh, so could you kind of just talk a little bit about that, the kind of the setup of the work and how you gather some of this information and then kind of, and we could kind of go through some of the ways that you, uh, are trying to redescribe depression. Um,

[00:16:32] John Swinton: was looking at the, um, It was a phenomenological study, which basically just means that you listen to somebody's story and take it at face value, rather than trying to interpret through a diagnosis or anything else. And so you're really taking people's stories seriously. And I was listening, I spent time with people who live with schizophrenia, people who live with bipolar disorder, and people who live with major depression.

And my, my objective was to help them to articulate their story in a way that, uh, was true to who they are. And so, really, it's funny because you have these diagnoses and you have a certain understanding of what these diagnoses mean. But when you meet people, And when you listen to their stories, it's completely different.

You know, it's not that the big story is wrong. It's just that, you know, when it's happening to you and your community and yourself, people tell very, very different stories. And so, um, the intention of that piece of research was to capture these stories and to present a kind of phenomenological narrative based understanding of how Christians understood and lived with, uh, severe mental health challenges.

[00:17:41] Geoff Holsclaw: I just want to jump right into kind of your re description based off of both these thick descriptions, the phenomenological description, as well as like your theological training and kind of wrestling with scripture. But you say that, uh, the primary problem for those, uh, living with major depression is not sadness, but an experience of a deep loss of joy.

Can we talk about those two things about how depression doesn't necessarily equate to sadness and then. Uh, rather it's some sort of loss of, of joy or an experience of joy. So could you do that first part, um, kind of relating, but disconnecting sadness and depression.

[00:18:21] John Swinton: Sure. Well, the way that people in this study describe it to me, they said, clearly sadness is not the same thing as depression. Uh, sadness, depression sometimes involves sadness, but depression is not marked by sadness. It's something different. It's almost like we would describe it as two different paths.

Sadness is running one way, and in parallel depression is there, but they're not the same things. And one of the fascinating things that people said to me, one or two people said to me was, um, I long for sadness because at least with sadness, it's a feeling. It's something I feel. Depression is a complete lack of feeling and inability to feel anything.

So, so sadness is at least you can possibly identify why you're sad. And if you're, when you're sad, you're feeling it. Depression is Just emptiness, just an inability to, to feel in that sense.

[00:19:15] Geoff Holsclaw: So you could be depressed and your sense of depression could make you feel sad, but you're not necessarily depressed because you have something else that you're sad about. Um, so it's actually the direction, the causal direction might be a little different. Uh, and you mentioned like, so that's why it's not helpful when, you know, well meaning relatives are like, well, what do you have?

What do you have to be sad about? Like there's this, this, this, these things are going well. You're surrounded by people who love you, like, you know, snap out of it or something like that. Um, but that's not really the sadness. Isn't really the thing. So you, you mentioned, uh, and you have all sorts of vignettes and, uh, little descriptions by.

You know, in people's own words, but you say depression is not an absence of happiness, nor is it the presence of sadness. It is an anti feeling that results in an ongoing struggle to find and hold on to joy. So could you fill out a little bit more of that, that anti feeling that you kind of mentioned already?

[00:20:09] John Swinton: it just means that if you feel happy, if you feel sad you feel it, you know, it goes on something within your body. If you, an anti feeling is not to feel anything at all. It's just a sense of emptiness. Everybody else seems to be happy. Everybody else seems to be feeling great things. And I just feel kind of dead inside.

I don't have anything I can articulate other than nothingness. And joy, joy is interesting because, um, One of the interesting things about, when Paul lays out the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, he does name joy as a fruit of the Spirit. But he doesn't name happiness as a fruit of the Spirit. So happiness is an emotion, a fleeting experience that comes and goes for us.

But joy is enduring. And joy is enduring because it's based on a hope beyond yourself. And it's not necessary to feel joyful in the sense of feeling happy. Joy comes when you, you can hold on to the center point of your life, which for Paul would be, was, was Jesus in that way. And so, uh, joy incorporates suffering.

You can be, you can suffer, but you can still have that sense of joy. Even if you can't feel it, you can be within the purview of joy.

[00:21:29] Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, on this podcast, we often talk about joys being a relational emotion that, like you said, encompasses both suffering and tragedy because it's, uh, it's about the presence being in the presence of someone who longs to be in your

[00:21:43] John Swinton: That's right. That's

[00:21:48] Geoff Holsclaw: is that God is.

is always with us. Uh, even kind of in, in the mountaintop experiences as well as, as the valleys, uh, you know, Psalm 23 says that, you know, God is always with us even in the midst of all those things. So I thought that was really helpful for me just to kind of disconnect the sadness and the happiness, but then kind of that, that longing for joy as essential, um, as kind of a gift.

I think I was wondering if sometimes even the gift of people. To call it a gift is kind of weird, I guess, but it's a remembrance that, um, that maybe, especially us in the West or maybe just America. So I don't know if this is a British thing, but you know, too often we do equate joy and happiness and God's blessing on our life as, as these positive markers.

And if there's not these positive aspects happening in our life, then we feel something's wrong with us spiritually. But, you know, maybe the remembrance of depression is, is to help us remember, no, joy is something more than that. It's, you know, it's, It's beyond just that, and you can experience it in all these places.

There's, um,

[00:22:52] John Swinton: I think that's right. 

The Spirituality of Darkness and Joy

[00:22:53] John Swinton: But I also think, you know, there's, there is a spirituality of, of darkness that we sometimes overlook. You know, it's very clear, scripture says very clear, God is always with us and God is always for us. So that, that's a given. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, if you look at the Psalms of Lament, there's more Psalms of Lament than any other, uh, psalm, than any other, uh, But there's more lament Psalms than the Psalms of Lament than any other kind of psalm.

And, you know, some of the psalms have joyful resolves. You know, the psalmist gets very angry and upset, but then he comes back and discovers God's has said, God's unchanging love. But some of the psalms don't. Psalm 88 just stops there. Darkness is my only companion. And I always think, you know, what's going on there?

Because that's a prayer. But what does it mean to pray? Darkness is my only companion. But then I, I, I began to think about, um, you know, Jesus and the cross. Jesus cries, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Uh, he doesn't get an answer. He just cries out. It's not that Jesus, who is God, loses his faith, but he does have that sense of disconnection from the Father in that way.

Uh, the psalmist is not, his faith has not disappeared. He just feels disconnected. And there's something very powerful pastorally about that, that when we feel disconnected from God, we can identify with Jesus who felt disconnected. So in other words, we're not alone and it's not a lack of faith or a lack of prayer.

It's something that we can turn to Jesus and discover that he has had a similar experience in that way. I think reclaiming that these kind of more, um, dark, negative dimensions of our spirituality, which are really, really important. Otherwise, it wouldn't be there, is a way to begin to de stigmatize some of the aspects of depression.

[00:24:48] Geoff Holsclaw: it kind of helps us, uh, remember or. Renormalize kind of the theology of God's absence or the experience of God's absence. You mentioned you say 115 you say it is a theological mistake to assume that the experience of Abandonment and the absence of God is necessarily a sign of human faithlessness or sinfulness And that that people who struggle with depression kind of help us remember that theological truth like just struggling with God's absence but It's actually a pretty regular aspect of the spiritual life.

Um, and that doesn't mean, uh, that there's something kind of wrong. You talk about like God's hiding. Um, and so I think that absence and presence of God, um, is something that maybe we need to remember about. I know at least in kind of our environments, uh, I'm more of the charismatic tradition, so we're definitely always like looking for the feelings of God.

So the present, the tangible presence of God. And then when we, when that doesn't happen, then we get into those things of like. Like who did something wrong? Do I have a secret sin or are we not praying hard enough? Um, which sometimes could then create this, this spiral, but rather just being like, well, no, the God's absence is, um, uh, kind of a mode of God's presence in our life, uh, oftentimes.

[00:26:12] John Swinton: I think that's also why you need to take seriously the idea of the body of Christ. I mean, when Paul talks about the body of Christ, it's not a metaphor, it's meant to be a reality. And within the body of Christ, it's marked by diversity, but diversity of emotional feelings. So, if you can't feel connected to God at this moment in time, then I can do it for you.

And I can be with you, and I can hold that space, that difficult space, until you can pick it up again. So we're going to see that these kinds of experiences are shared experiences, and the body of Christ reminds us that within the body there'll be happy people, there'll be sad people, but we are still together as a body, and we just need to wait for one another, and hold one another in these difficult times.

And I think that's, that's really faithful community.

[00:26:57] Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. And the goal of community is then to be like. The type of people together that can both weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh that you could do both. And you don't have to like force, uh, one group to, to be in the other place. Um, but we could just be flexible, um, and be with people, be attuned to people.

Well, that's to kind of end the book. You talk about questions of health. So, which we're kind of getting into right now. So could you talk about a little bit about in your mind, you kind of hold the idea of. Healing or health separate from being cured. Could you just talk about that a little bit that difference?

Healing, Health, and Shalom

[00:27:37] John Swinton: The model of health I work with in the book is the biblical concept of shalom. So when we think about health, inevitably because those of us who live in the West come from highly medicalised contexts, we tend to think about health in medical terms as the absence of illness. So we're moving away from something.

Now, if you have, uh, Cancer, the movement away from cancer is treatment to get rid of that, and that's healing and that's health is when you go back to the thing that you were before, before you had that thing. But the Bible doesn't have an equivalent term to that. Shalom is a very interesting concept.

Because Shalom means peace at heart. But it's a big piece. It's peace within yourself, peace with your community, peace with society, peace with the creation, and ultimately peace with God. And so to be in shalom is to be in right relationship, irrespective of your physical, mental health. So, you know, you could be really ill.

You could be on your deathbed and, uh, uh, be healthy because you're holding on to the thing that keeps you going in that sense, which would be Jesus. Um, or you could be really an Olympic athlete and be really unhealthy because all you think about is yourself and your own body in that sense. So when you think about health in that way, um, Healing becomes not simply the eradication of something, but the connection.

So healing is a movement towards God, where even in the midst of the stuff that you're going through, you're able to hold on to Jesus in the midst of the storm, which is kind of what the book's titled in that way. Um, and so that's not to say that people can't be cured and that cure is not a good thing.

Of course it is. I mean, Jesus cured. There's some fascinating things. conversations to be had around that. But curing and healing are not necessarily the same thing. To be cured is to be rid of something. To be healed is to live well with it in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in relation to you, you and your faith.

[00:29:51] Geoff Holsclaw: So, uh, health is not like a, an ideal, like medical kind of concept, but rather it's a relational concept. Like. How are you in relationship with God? And so health is a person or the presence of God in some fashion. And I think that's really helpful again, back in our charismatic kind of context to kind of go back to like medical healing, you know, like we pray for people's physical healing, you know, we pray for mental health.

Kind of healing. Uh, but I think this distinction is, you know, cause sometimes people are like, Oh, you prayed, but I didn't get cured. And there's like a disappointment there. But oftentimes if you kind of continue talking with people to feel, they'll be like, yeah, but I felt God's presence in that moment, or it felt like I felt more of God's presence.

And I think that that's a helpful way for me to talk about, um, Well, there's health growing in you, you know, if you're more connected with God, even if this particular ailment, um, isn't being cured. So that was, that was really, uh, really helpful for me. So thank you for that.

[00:30:50] John Swinton: Yeah.

[00:30:52] Geoff Holsclaw: Well, are there any other kind of, um, main thoughts or points coming out of, um, kind of your book that you always want to be sure people kind of hold on to finding Jesus in the storm?

Mm. Mm

The Power of Friendship in Mental Health

[00:31:04] John Swinton: I mean, For me, the most important thing is A, to deepen people's understandings of an experience or experiences that are often misunderstood, stigmatized, and which causes people to be alienated. People's experiences are completely understandable. Listen to people's stories and you'll begin to understand things differently.

And when that happens, uh, you'll be able to think seriously about the issue of friendship. It seems to me that in terms of mental health, I mean I said earlier on, what does the, what does the church bring to the table? Well, it brings many things. But one of the most profound things it brings is friendship.

And the kind of Christ like friendship, which is always for those whom society pushes to the margins, whom society chooses to, to ignore. That kind of friendship, It's a kind of gift that we can give to one another in the context of mental health and mental health challenges. And the beautiful thing about that, about friendship in that context, is that, you know, in John's gospel, Jesus says, I no longer call you disciples, nor do I call you servants, I call you friends.

So friendship becomes discipleship. So what you're really thinking about is not how can I help this poor person who has a mental health challenge, you're thinking how can I enable this person who has a vocation who, uh, uh, and a calling from God and who's a disciple, how can I help them to fulfill that calling and to become a fellow disciple with them?

[00:32:26] Geoff Holsclaw: I love that. So becoming friends amongst all of us with all of our challenges, some of which are mental health challenges. And how can we really listen in a deep way to one another rather than having stereotypes, stigmatisms, or just, you know, kind of whatever you hear in the news. So ask people questions about their experiences and that's good for, that's good for everyone, everyone in the church.

Just ask people, be curious, be good friends. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:32:54] Geoff Holsclaw: Well, thank you so much for being on today. Where can people, um, I know you have another book

[00:33:00] John Swinton: Well, they can follow me, um, on Facebook or Instagram, um, and they could also listen to my music, which I feel I have to mention, like,

[00:33:10] Geoff Holsclaw: try to convince

[00:33:12] John Swinton: right, so I have a, I have a new album that's just come out called, uh, Beautiful Songs About Difficult Things, and it tries to put these kind of theological issues around mental health, um, disability, various other, love, life and happiness into music, uh, and it's just intended to help people to think differently about.

These kind of issues. So, yeah.

[00:33:33] Geoff Holsclaw: so much for being on with us today. I really appreciate it. And I know you have another book coming out maybe in a year or so. So we'll probably, I'll probably track you down and try to convince you to come back on.

[00:33:51] John Swinton: Sounds like a threat.

[00:33:53] Geoff Holsclaw: Ah, well, an invitation, an invitation. Well, thank you so much. 

Um,