Darkness Is My Only Companion, Revised and Expanded Edition
Overview
This book treats the often neglected questions that confront Christians when they encounter mental illness, either in themselves or those they love. How can God be good and allow mental illness? Why does he sometimes not answer prayer the way we would like? Is suicide wrong? Kathryn Greene-McCreight is eminently qualified to address such questions as she is both an Episcopal priest and a sufferer of bipolar disorder. Drawing on the Bible, Christian tradition, and her own experience, she offers practical insights and encouraging reflections on this difficult topic.
The first edition has been widely acknowledged as a classic on the subject of mental illness. This revised edition includes the latest research findings in addition to anecdotal and pastoral insights.
Looking for more Christian mental health resources? Check out the Baker Counseling and Family Collection (5 vols.).
- Provides both sound instruction on counselling the mentally ill and a brief biographical account of the author’s own struggles
- Presents the realities of mental illness in raw but compelling narrative
- Draws on both the Christian tradition as well as biblical teaching
- Darkness
- Mental Illness
- Temptation to Suicide
- Mania
- Darkness, Again
- Feeling, Memory, and Personality
- Brain, Mind, and Soul
- Sin, Suffering, and Despair
- Dark Night, Discipline, and the Hiddenness of God
- Health and Prayer
- How Clergy, Friends, and Family Can Help
- Choosing Therapy
Top Highlights
“Do you notice anyone consistently tearing up during the hymns or prayers? Are you aware of any familial problems or causes for grief? Has anyone become unexpectedly less communicative, smiling less frequently, gaining or losing weight? Unusually timid, reserved, even angry?” (Page 142)
“Christ is my castle to keep me safe. He has entered the hell of this place for me, has gone before me, and stays with me.” (Page 74)
“While it may take the mind to apprehend God as a ‘problem,’ it takes the soul to love and cleave to God as Holy Trinity” (Page 94)
“Offer to pray. If you have an oil stock, offer anointing. If you have a Communion kit, offer Communion.” (Page 142)
“Now the storage area in my soul for all the hurts that had been pretended away is overflowing.” (Page 7)
I am often asked by people who have read Hannah's Child, my memoir wherein I tell the story of what it meant to live with someone suffering with bipolar disorder, how to go on in the face of such an illness. I simply recommend Greene-McCreight's Darkness Is My Only Companion. I do so because the story she tells is shaped by her profound Christological commitments and wisdom, making this a book that we simply cannot live without.
—Stanley Hauerwas, professor emeritus of divinity and law, Duke Divinity School
In Darkness Is My Only Companion Kathryn Greene-McCreight takes the reader on her private journey through the hidden world of mental illness. Personal, painful, and informative, this experience is shared so that others may be healed. Weaving Scripture throughout her story Kathryn shows us that the engine of hope that drives recovery is faith in a loving God who hears. This book is a must read for every person struggling with a mental health problem, every pastor that ministers to those in distress, and every family member whose loved one has been taken away from them by a mental disorder.
—Matthew S. Stanford, author, Grace for the Afflicted: A Clinical and Biblical Perspective on Mental Illness
In this honest and poignant reflection Kathryn Greene-McCreight seeks to 'witness to the working of the triune God in the pain of one mentally ill Christian.' She does so beautifully, graciously guiding readers through the depths of depression and the cacophony of mania to the hard road of ‘reconstruction’—always relying on Scripture and the prayers and hymns of the church to give voice to her experience. This ‘extended prayer’ of a book is a gift to the church and to anyone who seeks to walk faithfully alongside someone with mental illness.
—Warren Kinghorn, assistant professor of psychiatry and pastoral and moral theology, Duke Divinity School
- Title: Darkness is my Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness,
- Author: Kathryn Greene-McCreight
- Edition: Second
- Publisher: Brazos
- Publication Date: 2015
- Christian Group: Anglican/Episcopalian
- Pages: 240
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Pastoral Care and Counseling
