One person told me, “It’s the first time I’ve been in a church for 30 years, since that day.”
mental illness
We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “bridge.”
He leaned back and sighed. “I think what you need is a spiritual experience.”
From the psych hospital to the jail
Two new books provide a devastating vision of America’s mental health crisis.
We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “storm.”
“When the church couldn’t talk about suicide or mental illness, it felt like God couldn’t either.”
Poems of witness
Molly McCully Brown recovers the lives of women at an institution notorious for its eugenics program.
Medicine for madness
I relate to physical sickness more easily than mental illness. So does our culture.
Take & Read: American religious history
Grant Wacker recommends the best recently published books in his field.
A teenage killer’s brain
You can never fully know your child’s interior life. You cannot know the measure of sadness or rage that may be unfolding within them.
Revelation, by Dennis Covington
Dennis Covington is famous for seeking faith in extreme places. Twenty years ago it was the snake-handling, poison-drinking Christians of southern Appalachia.
I told her she was upsetting people with her message of accusation and fear. She responded by telling someone nearby that they were going to hell.
Recently my father-in-law's Medicaid plan stopped covering Lexapro—with little notice. By the time he could get authorization for a "preferred" antidepressant, he had quit cold turkey.
