Books and Links for Churches,
Families, Siblings, Spouses, Parents.
Updated
07/29/09
Appropriate
Language in Discussing Mental Illness
Book List for
Churches
Carlson, Dwight L. Why Christians Shoot Their Wounded?: Helping
(Not Hurting) Those with emotional Difficulties. Inter-Varsity, 1994.
This book is worthy of
its many good reviews. Carlson, a physician and psychiatrist, cites scientific
evidence to restore peace and dignity to those who have been told by
well-meaning individuals that their mental illness is due to sin, spiritual
weakness, or lack of faith. Pointing to substantial research findings, Carlson
takes issue with prominent Christian writers and speakers who over-simplify
emotional distress
Carlson is one of the
few current Christian writers who points out the healing dynamic in the word translated
“equip” in Ephesians 4:7-13. The healing aspect of this word implies that
churches need good health in order to offer healthy ministries to hurting
people. Also, he points out that the business model approach of church involves
number crunching leads to neglecting or crushing the wounded in our
congregations.
Clinebell, Jr.,
Howard. The Mental Health Ministry of the Local Church.
Crabb, Larry. Connecting:
Healing for Ourselves and Our Relationships A Radical New Vision.
Psychologist Larry Crabb
boldly claims that churches can accomplish much of the healing that people now
depend on mental health professionals to provide.
Gregg-Schroeder, Susan. In the
Shadow of God's Wings: Grace in the Midst of Depression. Upper
Room Books, 1997.
Johnson, Julie Tallard. Hidden Victims/Hidden Healers: An
Eight-Stage Healing Process for Families and Friends of the Mentally Ill.
PEMA Publications, 1988.
This book describes very
well the eight stages that family and friends move through in dealing with someone’s mental illness.
Murren, Doug. Churches
That Heal: Becoming a Church That Mends Broken Hearts and Restores Shattered
Lives.
This book is written
from the perspective of an experience pastor who has bi-polar disorder. With it
properly medicated and under good control, Doug built and was pastor of the
fastest growing and largest church in his denomination. The congregation was
begun in his living room with ten people and grew to an aggregate adherence of
approximately 8000 with a Sunday attendance of 4800 people. Like Martin Luther
who suffered from depression, Rev. Murren did not keep his mental illness a
secret but used it as an opportunity for ministry.
Pastor Doug Murren
writes as one wounded healer (bi-polar) to another by sharing scripture and
true stories of how to create a church that brings healing to the broken
emotional lives and relationships in their community.
Oates, Wayne E. Behind the Masks:
Personality Disorders in Religious Behavior.
Pate, C. Marvin, and Sheryl L. Pate. Behind
the Masks: Personality Disorders in the Church.
Strobel, Shriley. Creating a Circle of Caring: The Church and the
Mentally
Waterhouse, Steven. Strength for His People: A Ministry for
Families of the Mentally Ill (Book) Westcliff Bible Press, 1994.
Speaking from the
experience of having a brother with schizophrenia, Pastor Steven Waterhouse
shares the painful impact of mental illness on a Christian family. Rev.
Waterhouse carefully brings to the forefront several concerns seldom addressed
in other materials—particularly the valid and invalid theories of
schizophrenia’s causes and the relationship of psychiatry to religion. One
difficult issue is covered with a frank discussion on differentiating
schizophrenia from demon influence, this work is extremely thought
provoking.
Suggestions for Further
NAMI Indianapolis has an outstanding discussion of current
books related to faith and mental illness on its Web site. FaithNet NAMI highly recommends that you
review this carefully prepared study performed by Carole Wills.
NAMI
Mental Illness and the Church Annotated Bibliography
Families
Amador, Xavier. I
Am Not Sick I Don’t Need Help!
Finally! Now family members,
clergy and counselors have a practical guidebook on how to work more
productively with mentally ill persons who deny their illness and refuse
medication.
Carter, Rosalynn Helping
Someone With Mental Illness, A Compassionate Guide for Family, Friends,
and Caregivers, by, ©1998 Times Books, Random House
Hatfield Ph.D., Agnes
B., Harriet P. Lefley, Ph.D., (Editors),
Families of the Mentally Ill, Coping and Adaptation
1999
Johnson,
Julie Tallard. Hidden Victims/Hidden Healers: An Eight-Stage Healing
Process for Families and Friends of the Mentally Ill.
This book
describes very well the eight stages that family and friends move through in
dealing with someone’s mental illness.
Marsha, Diane
T. and Rex Dickens. How to Cope with Mental Illness in Your Family: A
Self-Care Guide for Siblings, Offspring, and Parents
Winkler,
Kathy. Randi Kreger. Hope for Parents: Helping Your
Borderline Son or Daughter Without Sacrificing Your Family or Yourself.
Available
from BPD Central @ bpdcentral.com/bks/hope.php
Woolis,
Rebecca. When Someone You Love Has
A Mental Illness
This book is
loaded with good practical suggestions.
Borderline Personality Disorder
Online
BPD Central Online Community
for Family Members with a Borderline Loved One
NEW
VIDEO ABOUT BPD ON NET
Recognizing
Borderline Personality Disorder in Children," from the Keeping Kids
Healthy series that
It is a must-see for parents with borderline
teens because it is informative and because it validates a parents'
perspective.
STUDY SHOWS
"SCHEMA THERAPY" HELPS THOSE WITH BPD
Schema Therapy is showing a deeper personality
change that enables patients to feel better. Schema Therapy incorporates a
variety of approaches, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and emotion-focused
techniques. Jeffrey Young, Ph.D., of the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York,
says that the greater effectiveness of Schema Therapy arises in part from its
use of "limited re-parenting."
Books
Forward, Susan. Emotional
Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt
to Manipulate You. NY: Harper-Collins Publishers,
1997.
Gunderson, John G. Borderline
Personality Disorder 1984
Gunderson, John G. and Perry D., Ph.D.
Hoffman. Understanding and Treating
Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for Professionals and Families
Gunderson, John G. Borderline
Personality Disorder: A Clinical Guide
Kreger, Randi, with James Paul
Shirely. The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook
Kreger, Randi, and Kim A.
Willams-Justensen. Love and Loathing: Protecting Your Mental Health and
Legal Rights When Your Partner Has Borderline Personality Disorder.
Kreger, Randi The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New
Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells. It contains a
discussion of 3 clusters of persons with BPD. First, the classic mental health
picture as seen in I Hate You, Don’t
Kreisman,
Jerold. I Hate You, Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
This classic focuses on the low functioning borderline personality disorder. It also does a good job of picking apart the emotional and psychological development from infancy on up, which has helps one understand where a lot of this stuff comes from. The book also introduces the reader to the SET theory (sympathy - empathy - truth) as a way to cope.
The discussion of BP's and organized religion helps one to understand how the rigid splitting common to all of them causes them to often gravitate toward legalistic churches, albeit only to take up legalism as another club in the arsenal of BP weapons. Yes, people with BPD can be and often are saved. However, they often use the Bible as a weapon of judgment, condemnation and criticism, not of grace, reconciliation, and love.
Lawson, Christine Ann, Ph.D. and Jason
Aronson. Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children
Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile
Relationship
Dealing with this
mental illness within a family calls for wise and firm boundaries. This book
offers practical insights and instruction where Stop Walking on Eggshells only touches on lightly. The two
books together make an awesome pair. This book is quoted at length in the
workbook for SWOE. It is not only descriptive of the four types of these mothers but also prescriptive in how to relate with
each type within healthy boundaries.
Lineham, Marsha M. Cognative-Behavioral
Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Lineham, Marsha M. Skills
Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder (Paperback)
Mason, Paul T., Randi Kreger, and Larry
J. Siever. Stop Walking on Eggshells; Coping When Someone You Care about
Has Borderline Personality Disorder New Harbinger
Pubns (July 1998)
While this book is written specifically
for dealing with one mental illness, I find its principles solid and
transferable to help anyone to stop walking on eggshells around them and
reclaim their own life.
Melville,
Miller, Alice. The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self.
This book could
also have been named The Trauma of the Gifted Child. This sort of home
environment often produces people with Borderline
Personality Disorder.
Moskovitz, Richard. Lost in the
Mirror: An Inside Look at the Borderline
Personality Disorder.
Oates, Wayne E. Behind the Masks:
Personality Disorders in Religious Behavior.
Pate, C. Marvin, and Sheryl L. Pate. Behind
the Masks: Personality Disorders in the Church.
Porr, Valerie. Marsha M Linehan
(forward), When Someone You Love
Has Borderline Personality Disorder: How
to Repair the Relationship
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is
among the most difficult to treat and debilitating of psychological problems.
Even though BPD is far rarer than major anxiety and mood disorders, it accounts
for more than 10 percent of all psychiatric outpatient visits and more than 25
percent of all psychiatric cases that require hospitalization. And, individuals
with BPD have a greater than 70 percent chance of attempting or committing
suicide.
With statistics like these, it's easy to
imagine how difficult it is to be a family member, friend, or partner of
someone with BPD. Maintaining a safe and positive relationship despite BPD
requires specialized information and skills, the information that readers will
find in this much-needed book. "Loving Someone with Borderline Personality
Disorder" offers readers new ways
of communicating, developing trust and repairing damaged relationships with a
person with BPD. These methods are adapted from Dialectic Behavior Therapy
(DBT), a revolutionary new psychotherapy that research suggests is the most
effective means of treating this disorder. The techniques presented in the book
all start from a position of compassion, with the acceptance and validation of
individuals with BPD. These attitudes work to foster an atmosphere for the BPD
sufferer that will motivate him or her to seek treatment, to work at the
treatment they've already undertaken, and to truly believe that they can get
better.
Rashkin,
Rachel MS. An Umbrella for Alex
Roth, Kimberlee and Freda B. Friedman.
Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds
& Build Trust
Spradlin,
Scott. Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior
Therapy Can Put You in Control (New Harbinger Self-Help
Reviews claim this book make Lineham’s
Cognative-Behavioral techniques both understandable and useful to people who do
not have a PhD. in Psychology. It is recommended for both consumers with BPD
and those with bipolar.
Tinman, Ozzie. One
Way Ticket to
Walker, Anthony. The Siren's Dance
: My Marriage to a Borderline: A Case Study Rodale Books (September 20,
2003)
Randi Kreger: “For six years, I have
maintained several support groups on the web for people who have a borderline
partner. Mr. Walker's book tells a very familiar story--ignoring red flags in
particular. Since most non-BP partners need immense validation, this book will
validate your experiences so you will not feel so uncertain and alone if you
have a BP partner.”
Weiser,
Conrad. Healers: Harmed & Harmful.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.
A psychologist and Administrator Systems
Therapy and Consultation Services in
Winkler, Kathy. Randi Kreger. Hope for Parents:
Helping Your Borderline Son or Daughter Without Sacrificing Your Family or Yourself.
Zakiya,
Njemile. A Peek Inside The Goo:
Depression & The Borderline Personality
"This book is for friends and
family.”
Narcissism
Brown, Nina W. Children of the
Self-Absorbed: A Grownup's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents.
Donaldson-Pressman, Stephanie, Robert M.
Pressman. The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment.
Miller, Alice. The Drama of the
Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self.
This book could also have been named The
Trauma of the Gifted Child. This sort of home environment often produces people
with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Bipolar
Duke, Patty and Gloria Hochman. A
Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness Bantam, 1997, 368 pages.
Duke, Patty and Kenneth Turan. Call
Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke Bantam, 1988, 320 pages.
Autobiography of Oscar and Emmy award
winning actor Patty Duke, this one details her whole life, including her diagnosis
with bipolar disorder.
Jamison, Kay Redfield. An Unquiet
Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness Vintage, 1997, 240 pages.
McReynolds, James D.Min., Psy.D. DANCING
WITH BIPOLAR BEARS: LIVING IN JOY DESPITE ILLNESS
Chronic joy from someone who's been
there, "Dancing With Bipolar Bears" is the remarkable story of
success despite a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. James "Jimmy"
McReynolds was a rising star young minister when bipolar illness was diagnosed
in his senior year of college. In Dancing With Bipolar Bears Dr. McReynolds
shares his remarkable story and offers unsolicited advice from someone who's
been there and is still there. If you have an illness, this book is your tool
for shaping the life you have continued to envision but never thought possible
Passionate Joy connects the psychological and spiritual
understanding of our least discussed human emotion. This book reflects the dawn
of a revolutionary approach to living. Norman Vincent Peale anointed Jim
McReynolds as minister of joy to the world. The most important characteristic
of a minister of joy is humility. This book teaches people the purpose of our
lives is to create an atmosphere for joy and miracles to happen. Life is
difficult. Building a wealth of joy enables us to know happiness. Readers will
enter the joy of the Lord as they reflect upon their own joy.
Papolos, Demitri M.D. and
Janice Papolos. The Bipolar Child: The Definitive and Reassuring
Guide to
Childhood's
Most Misunderstood Disorder. New York: Broadway Books, 2002, 415 pages.
Pauley, Jane. Skywriting: A Life
Out of the Blue Random House, 2004, 288 pages.
Notable simply because Jane Pauley,
former co-host of
Jane's type of bipolar, (medication
induced Bipolar III), was diagnosed after she was prescribed steroids for a
bout of hives. Jane's discussion of bipolar disorder is, like Jane herself,
rather understated. There seems little of the drama and chaos that ordinarily
accompanies and surrounds this condition in her life.
Well written and good
"biography" reading, and good for getting a more well-rounded picture
of who may have the disorder, but lacking in imparting substantive
understanding of the disorder itself.
Spradlin,
Scott. Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior
Therapy Can Put You in Control (New Harbinger Self-Help
Workbook) (Paperback)
Reviews claim this book make Lineham’s Cognative-Behavioral techniques both understandable and useful to people who do not have a PhD. In Psychology. It is recommended for both consumers with BPD and those with bipolar.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D.
and Michael Bl. Knable, D.O. Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar
Disorder
for
Patients, Families, and Providers. New York: Basic Books, 2002, 306 pages.
Schizophrenia
Fuller, E. Surviving
Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers (Fourth
Edition)
Kotulski, Tina. Saving Millie: A Daughter's Story of Surviving Her Mother's Schizophrenia
Waterhouse, Steven. Strength for His People: A Ministry for
Families of the Mentally Ill (Book)
Westcliff Bible Press, 1994.
Speaking from the
experience of having a brother with schizophrenia, Pastor Steven Waterhouse
shares the painful impact of mental illness on a Christian family.
Rev. Waterhouse
carefully brings to the forefront several concerns seldom addressed in other
materials—particularly the valid and invalid theories of schizophrenia’s causes
and the relationship of psychiatry to religion. One difficult issue is covered
with a frank discussion on differentiating
schizophrenia from demon influence, this work is extremely thought
provoking.
Siblings
Imagining
Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival by
Life of a mentally ill Robert
from a brother's perspective, this book details the trials of dealing with
mental illness in the family from a personal point of view. The author was
actually left to deal with his brother pretty much on his own when the parents
up and moved to
Robert has been
variously diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, and bipolar with schizo-affective,
but the diagnosis doesn't really make much difference in this story; it's a
moving, personal account of mental illness.
Spouses
Depression
Imperfect Harmony:
How to Stay Married for the Sake of Your Children and Still Be Happy. by Joshua
Coleman.
His chapter
on marriage to a spouse with depression addresses the dynamics very well.
Coping
with a loved one's depression
Borderline Personality Disorder
See Previous References.
More
resources
Resources for Daughters and Sons Who Have a Parent with a Mental Illness
For more information contact: John M. Crowe, D.Min., APC
Member, NAMI-NC Member, NC Mental Health AssociationIncapacity Leave
E-Mail drcrowe@nccumc.org
Phone: 919 759-2146 
The NCC-UMC Committee on
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