How should Christian Counselors deal with psychotic people?

Nouthetics: Schizophrenic and Mania

The problem is that nouthetics was designed with everyday problems and mood swings in mind.  It seldom concerns itself with the difference between feeling “down” and clinical depression. Nouthetics doesn’t accept that there are differences between the two levels of depression, for it recognizes no physical causes for clinical depression or most other illnesses.

Nouthetic counselors surely do run into persons who have made a break with reality, but the nature of the counseling seldom brings counselors face-to-face with schizophrenics so conceptually disorganized and paranoid that they can't function. With Bible in hand, counselors would not get very far with persons whose auditory hallucinations make it impossible to concentrate. Bringing spiritual reality into a severely psychotic or manic person's world is like standing at a fixed point and talking to someone who is riding a merry-go-round. The person counseled might be able to comprehend a simple verse or biblical concept, but there is little ability to focus and the merry-go-round never slows. I've listened to the nonstop monologue of someone in a manic state without getting in a single word.

The rationality needed to hear this type of counsel and meditate on Scripture simply does not exist for such a person. Such lack of rationality and inability to concentrate indicate that there might be a flaw in the theory that mental illness relates strictly to spiritual need and will go away as Christians grow in biblical concepts. This material was taken from Steve and Robyn Bloem's book, Broken Mind Hope for Healing When You Feel Like You're Losing It.  It is copyrighted by Kregel Publications:Grand Rapids, MI (2005). The page is 184.





If you would like to know more about the book Broken Minds please go to this link:
http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Minds-Healing-Youre-Losing/dp/0825421187

Don't forget our seminar,Whispers in the Foyer, An Honest Look at the Christian and Mental Illness.   The date is February 22 2014, 10:am-4p.m. with an hour lunch.
http://sbloemreflections.blogspot.com/2013/12/our-seminar-whispers-in-foyer-honest.html