About me and this blog

I’m a 30-year old from the Montreal region, and my first experience with mental illness happened when I was 19, when I was hospitalized for 6 weeks suffering from PTSD and major depressive episode. I first began thinking about mental illness and its constructs as I observed problems of disempowerment, diagnostic over-reliance, dehumanisation, and a lack of holistic care within the mental health system. My personal experiences, and my views on mental illness in general, have definitely impacted my choice to search for understanding about what I’m experiencing and have experienced outside of medical models, though I believe it’s crucial to consider those as well.

I am not a scientist, a psychologist, or a theologian. I am just a person trying to faithfully engage with what it means, to me, to live with depression as a Christian. I am looking for answers about what I believe my faith can tell me. Ultimately, I am also trying to frame what I believe about God, because my experiences of being depressed shape my spiritual life in indelible and powerful ways.

I decided to start this blog as a personal project because I noticed a general lack of conversation about what it means to live with depression, and mental illness more generally, in an explicitly Christian way. I’m not entirely sure where my ideas will take me, but I thought I’d begin by reflecting Biblically on my faith because what my faith is saying to me about my depression is something I struggle with personally. I am not sure that this blog will resonate with anyone other than me, I’m not sure where it’s going or what purpose it will serve, and I’m not sure I will be successful.

I know I will never have all the answers, but I think it’s important to try and formulate the right questions, and to begin exploring the spaces between and around the two.