On Christian Counseling - II - Can Depression Ever Be a Good Thing

Here in my second post in this little tag team series I am doing with Adrian Warnock, I want to throw out a scenario, offer some opinions and get some input.

A couple of nights ago, my family and I watched one of our two favorite shows - Monk. Here is a description of Monk, from the show's website.

OBSESSIVE. COMPULSIVE. DETECTIVE.

Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) was once a rising star with the San Francisco Police Department, legendary for using unconventional means to solve the department's most baffling cases. But after the tragic (and still unsolved) murder of his wife, the devastated Monk became obsessive-compulsive. His psychological disorder has caused him to develop an abnormal fear of virtually everything: germs, heights, crowds... even milk. His condition eventually cost him his job, and continues to pose unique challenges in his daily life.

Monk is a detective afraid of the dark, a gumshoe afraid of gum. He has no problem cracking a case - as long as it doesn't involve heights or germs, and is in close proximity to his apartment. He'd like nothing more than to gain back his position on the San Francisco police force, but can he pull himself together and get back to solving crimes full time?

In the show, Monk regularly sees a psychiatrist. In the past, the psychiatrist has tried to prescribe medicine to settle Monk down, but he won't hear of it. He doesn't want any chemicals in his body. But in this show we watched things had gotten so bad and he was so down that he decided to take a medication offered by the psychiatrist. When Monk takes the medication, his fears, phobias and obsessions go away and he becomes a whole new person - the life of the party. But, he loses his keen crime fighting abilities. He has to go off the pills and return to the old neurotic (psychotic?) Monk in order to be able to solve the crime.

So, it is obvious that, in his neurotic state, he has an unusual ability to solve crime. When medication enables him to overcome his neuroses, he loses his ability. So, I have a question - can medicating mental conditions have adverse affects (besides any physical side effects of the medicine itself)?

Before you write the question off as unrealistic, as it is coming out of fictional situation created in Hollywood, I would beg you to consider the cases of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Soren Kierkegaard. Both were well known for suffering from depression or melancholy. Like Hamlet, Kierkegaard has been called the melancholy Dane.

Regarding Kierkegaard, here is an excerpt from an article in the journal Encephalos: Archives of Neurology and Psychology:

For a philosopher, like Sψren Kierkegaard, every page of his works is a window to his soul. Every work of the Danish philosopher illuminates some aspect of the perplexity of his psychological background. The depression, which started even from his childhood, is one of the main components of his psychological profile, been prominent in his life and seen clearly in his manuscripts, by those who are acquainted with the form of his writings. The dominant, austere, pious contradictory and melancholic personality of his father on one hand and the feeble and always discrete personality of his mother, on the other hand, have had contributed greatly in developing a very introversive and melancholic character. The very formal and ironic atmosphere of the elementary school, characterized by pietism and austerity acted as an additional factor for Kierkegaard’s further introversion and esotericism, resulting to a partial social isolation. Persons who have played an important role in enhancing Sψren Kierkegaard’s depressive tendency, inclining him to melancholy, were his father, his fiancee Regina Olsen, whom Sψren Kierkegaard engaged and returned her ring within one year, and the editor of Corsair, a light hearted weekly, who ridiculed, despised and humiliated the philosopher in public for weeks through the pages of his journal, provoking a negative social irradiation. Sψren Kierkegaard has had also the feeling of anxiety for the spiritual disintegration of his age, since the belief in eternal and absolute values, were replaced by secular values and the man was gradually inclined to spiritual and moral annihilation.

As for Spurgeon, he was similarly afflicted, consider these words:

I was lying upon my couch during this last week, and my spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for — but a very slight thing will move me to tears just now — and a kind friend was telling me of some poor old soul living near, who was suffering very great pain, and yet she was full of joy and rejoicing. I was so distressed by the hearing of that story, and felt so ashamed of myself, that I did not know what to do; wondering why I should be in such a state as this; while this poor woman, who had a terrible cancer, and was in the most frightful agony, could nevertheless "rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory."

And in a moment this text flashed upon my mind, with its real meaning. I am sure it is its real meaning. Read it over and over again, and you will see I am not wrong. "Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness." It does not say, "Though now for a season ye are suffering pain, though now for a season you are poor; but you are in heaviness;" your spirits are taken away from you; you are made to weep; you cannot bear your pain; you are brought to the very dust of death, and wish that you might die. Your faith itself seems as if it would fail you. That is the thing for which there is a needs be. That is what my text declares, that there is an absolute needs be that sometimes the Christian should not endure his sufferings with a gallant and a joyous heart; there is a needs be that sometimes his spirits should sink within him, and that he should become even as a little child smitten beneath the hand of God. Ah! beloved, we sometimes talk about the rod, but it is one thing to see the rod, and it is another thing to feel it; and many a time have we said within ourselves, "If I did not feel so low spirited as I now do, I should not mind this affliction;" and what is that but saying, "If I did not feel the rod I should not mind it?" It is just how you feel, that is, after all, the pith and marrow of your affliction. It is that breaking down of the spirit, that pulling down of the strong man, that is the very fester of the soreness of God's scourging — "the blueness of the wound, whereby the soul is made metter." I think this one idea has been enough to be food for me many a day; and there may be some child of God here to whom it may bring some slight portion of comfort. We will yet again dwell upon it. "Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations."

I would not wish the O.C.D. of Monk or the depression of Spurgeon or Kierkegaard on anyone. Yet, could Spurgeon and Kierkegaard have gained the wisdom and influence they attained without the depression they experienced?

I still can see a time and place for the relief of symptoms of depression through medication, but where do we draw the line in this? How can we help folks in depression (or O.C.D. or whatever else) see God in the midst of their pain? I don't have all the answers, so any input would be appreciated.