Mental Health, Medicine and Ministry is a pilot of a new product from Key Ministry. Our intent is to create a home for curated news and commentary on topics related to mental health, medicine and ministry for faithful Christians — especially those serving in positions of leadership in the church — from the physician and child psychiatrist who founded Key Ministry. Expect updates every Tuesday morning.

Do assisted suicide laws violate the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Newsweek magazine reports on two disability advocates suing the state of California over an assisted suicide law they say discriminates against residents with disabilities.

Amid existing health care disparities, assisted suicide, although ostensibly voluntary, imperils the ill and disabled. A law enabling it is discriminatory because it carves out an arbitrary health-related exception to the state's policy of deterring suicide attempts. Four disability rights groups have joined VanHook and Tischer in filing a federal lawsuit alleging that California's End of Life Option Act violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

I’ve argued that medically-assisted suicide is going to be the major “pro-life” issue of the 21st Century. The disability community is especially vulnerable. In some countries where medically-assisted suicide has been an option, suicide has been offered as an option to persons with disabilities who are suffering in part because of lack of access to needed medical care, housing and support services.

Living with Religious Scrupulosity or Moral OCD

A professor from Oklahoma Baptist University describes his experience with “religious OCD.” A point of emphasis in his discussion is the importance of Christian community to believers with OCD who experience intrusive thoughts that are in conflict with our faith.

This life demands more of us than we can imagine, but not more than we can bear. Because we don’t bear it alone. True conscience is not a hyper-individual inner experience, but a knowing with others, a cleaving to the wisdom of God’s Word and the witness of his body here on earth, the church. Conscience, understood this way, demands not that we follow every whim of our fallen minds, but that we collectively trust in the grace and goodness of the Father.
When your mind turns against you, you need other minds to ground you. In OCD – and in many other mental health conditions – recovery requires you to take a leap of faith, believing against your own deeply felt beliefs, accepting that you can’t always trust your mind, but that you can trust in God’s love for you. And in that love, he has given you voices of compassion and wisdom. Some days those voices will be all you have: a single faint, flickering light in the darkness. But that’s OK. It’s enough. It has to be.

Standing Firm in a Culture of Gender Confusion

When I’m talking with children’s or student ministry leaders, the most common question I’ve been asked this year is how to talk about gender issues with kids and families in their churches. I suspect most churches haven’t addressed this issue from the pulpit - my guess is many pastors would like to avoid the issue at a time when more and more people are incorporating their “pronouns” into their e-mail signatures and LinkedIn profiles. Chris Priestly - a lead pastor in a church serving a college town - does an excellent job in this post of modeling for other pastors how to faithfully teach on Scripture related to gender and sexuality while demonstrating love for persons who sexual or gender expression is inconsistent with “God’s Good Design.” Here’s an excerpt…

Paul’s final admonition is to “let all that you do be done in love.” What if the churches we pastor were to out-love the culture in its farcical claims of love? Of course, such love must be defined by Jesus and not by our world. Love is not love; God is love. Love accords with God, his character, his Word, his law, and his gospel. We must say what is good, show what is good, and love what is good. It is good to be a man. It is good to be a woman. It is good to repent of disordered sexuality and embrace God’s good design. I believe there is no greater force against the onslaught of rage in our culture than holy joy in the Lord and love for the life that he has given us. Preach the gospel; disciple men to become men of valor without shame; disciple women to become noble women of character without fear. Invite other men and women into that community to taste and see that the Lord and all his ways are good. It is that love that the world can only cheaply plagiarize. It is that love out of which we are called to act.

Would your church be prepared to welcome a family that needed to flee their home with little notice for refusing to “affirm” their child’s gender identity?

I had a lengthy conversation last week with a prominent ministry leader who wondered why I thought I needed to speak into gender issues at our Disability and the Church conference this past Spring. The topic is highly relevant to disability and mental health ministry. When the U.K. decided to close the large gender clinic that provided puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children and youth, 35% of their patients had been diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. Kids on the spectrum were seventeen times more likely to receive “gender-affirming” care than would be indicated by their share of the population at the time. We also know that rates of mental health issues (depression, suicidal behavior, trauma) are markedly higher in youth with non-traditional gender identity.

What would you do if a family turns up in your church with very little notice after being accused of child abuse for refusing to affirm the non-traditional gender identity of their child with autism or refusing to consent to recommended “gender-affirming” treatment? A family with no home? Parents without jobs? That possibility is more likely after the passage in California of Assembly Bill 957 - the Transgender, Gender-Diverse, and Intersex Youth Empowerment Act. From National Review:

California Bill AB957 amended a section of the state Family Code focused on “the best interests of the child,” adding new “comprehensive factors” including “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression.”
“Affirmation includes a range of actions and will be unique for each child, but in every case must promote the child’s overall health and well-being,” the bill, authored by Democratic assembly member Lori Wilson, states.
At the time, Wilson reaffirmed the importance of her bill and called parents unsupportive of youth transition “abusive.”
“It is not taking away any other factor,” the assemblywoman told the outlet. “If a parent is abusive to their child, I don’t care what name they use for their child, I don’t care with what pronouns they use. That child should not be with that parent.”

Yale forced to reconsider policies when students take medical leave because of mental health issues

Elite schools have historically treated students harshly who took medical leaves of absence as a result of mental health struggles. Students who withdrew were often required to reapply with no guarantee of getting back into school. They often lost the student health insurance they were depending upon to pay for treatment, forced to leave campus with very little notice and cut off from friends and advisors they counted on for support. A class-action lawsuit filed by Yale students with assistance from alumni is serving as a catalyst to change. From the New York Times:

“We discovered that there were just generations of Yalies who had had similar issues, who had kept quiet about it for decades and decades,” said Dr. Alicia Floyd, the physician, one of the group’s founders. “And we all felt like something needed to change.”
The organizing that began that day culminated last month in a legal settlement that considerably eases the process of taking a medical leave of absence at Yale.
Under the new policy, students will have the option to extend their insurance coverage for a year. They will no longer be banned from campus spaces or lose their campus jobs. Returning from leave will be simpler, with weight given to the opinion of the student’s health care provider.
Most strikingly, Yale has agreed to offer part-time study as an accommodation for students in some medical emergencies, a step it had resisted.

Christian universities should be at the forefront of providing the care and support necessary for students impacted by mental illness to recover and resume their studies.

Recommended Resource: Disability is Beautiful

Photo by Jake Muller on Disability Is Beautiful

Disability is Beautiful is a free, stock photography website launched by Ability Ministry featuring images of persons with disabilities. The site provides an exhaustive library of art provided by the disability community. Your usage of this art celebrates the beauty in disability and fights the stigma and negative narratives that exist. Check it out today!

Mental Health, Medicine and Ministry - September 19, 2023