Steve Jobs waited nine months before undergoing surgery for his pancreatic cancer. "I'll just get my healing from God!" is a common refrain of many religious people—clerics in particular, men (in general) and others—especially when the pathology is in the mind. Black women often "just pray about" something instead of seeking medical care and parents are often jailed for denying needed medical care to their children based on their religious beliefs.
Many times faith and illness collide; or, more accurately stated, faith and the perceived proper path to healing. When illness strikes (either the body or the mind), many people seek alternative paths to healing beyond the traditional path to the physician's or psychiatrist's door. This need not be. Faith, prayer, and health professionals need not be exclusive of each other.
In a CBS ‘60 Minutes' interview to air October 23, Walter Isaacson states that, despite the urgings of his wife and family, tech genius Steve Jobs "didn't want his body to be opened." He didn't want his body "to be violated in that way." Reportedly he tried nutritionists, holistic methods and used herbs for nine months in an attempt to cure his cancer. He later regretted that decision. Steve Jobs died October 5th.
Jobs was fortunate in one way: His type of pancreatic cancer was less aggressive than the uber-aggressive and more prevalent "adenodcarcinoma." If Jobs had had the surgery sooner, might he have lived even longer? We can't say for sure, but I'll go out on a limb and say probably. At least a bit longer; maybe even a year or so. But we do know that pancreatic cancer is a killer disease and for practically every illness, the sooner something is caught and removed, the better the patient's odds of survival or extending their life. Reducing tumor bulk plays an important role in that effort and goal.
As a physician and a surgeon, I, of course, value the benefits proper medical care and surgery affords. In fact, I love surgery. I love performing it, and I love the tremendous benefit it brings to the health of patients. That said, I do give credence to some alternative medical modalities. In fact I am a proponent of acupuncture after it worked wonders in easing the pain from my rotator cuff tear. But a tendon tear is not a cancer that needs to be removed—it's not threatening my life. It's not a leukemia killing my child. Nor is it killing me socially, causing me to have repeat, chaotic relationships, as people with borderline personality disorder experience.
When it comes to mental illness, many people of faith adamantly refuse to seek a psychiatrist or psychologist. In fact, some find it insulting, a spiritual shame, or a weakness in their faith, to seek mental health services. Why should I turn to man—another human—when I have God? God is my healer! This is especially true in the Black community, where mental illnesses are underdiagnosed and their prevalence grossly underestimated.
But just as Christians, Jews or others can get cancer, diabetes, tumors and other physical diseases, they can also get mental/psychological diseases. As humans, we are all of it: sexual, spiritual, maternal/paternal, professional, and emotional beings. Just as we have muscles and membranes, we have minds, and they too can become afflicted with different maladies.
It is not a failure to recognize the need to seek professional help for one's ailments, be they physical or psychological. Also, people need to implement a mature balance when it comes to making use of all entities that can help in the healing plan for your condition. As humans, we can be helpers one to another. God can use other humans to aid in—and be the primary instrument of—your healing.
For Christians, I say just look at the cross. There is a vertical, and a horizontal component. The vertical part can represent God to man, and the horizontal component can be the relationship between man and man. It all needs to work together. For the faith-based, prayer and physicians don't have to collide, but they can complement each other to aid in the healing plan...for you.
The Bible says, "I would that ye prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers." There is no exclusion of mental health in that passage, and one can't be "in health," when mental reasoning is aberrant.
People of faith need to remember that God has given us common sense, and intelligence and reasoning. Before you can be spiritually strong and well-reasoned, you have to be emotional sound. Why? Because whatever you read, study, or adopt must enter through the reasoning of your mind. If your mind is ill—affected by fears of abandonment, unfounded paranoia, schizophrenia, borderline personality, or other organic disorders—whatever you take in spiritually will pass through the aberrant prism of your mind and come out distorted on the other side.
Despite the likes of Dr. Conrad Murray—who should never have administered propofol in that setting—and some other bad apples we hear/read about, most doctors are well-intentioned toward their patients, and most do a damn good job for their patients. It is because of medical research, physician care and surgery that our life expectancy is what it is today.
As exceptionally genius as Steve Jobs was, it is sad to see him reason in such a way that may have accelerated his death. I pray that we all see a lesson in his story. For those with cancers or other ailments, including mental ones, don't fear that and those who are here to help and aim to heal you.
The book Blessed Health speaks directly to this point; in that book each chapter ends with "Rx: A Prescription for Your Soul." I will discuss this further in Part Two of this topic. I invite all of you to read it, especially Black women, whose specific "medical-spiritual connection" will be further explored. In short, many Black women will be in church practically every day of the week, but won't take one day a year to get their annual checkup, Pap smear, and mammogram. As a result, many are dying from diseases that other women survive in increasing numbers. "I'm not going to claim that" [disease] doesn't mean you don't have it.
To all...Be Healthy, Be Blessed... and make sure you are Living Well, a book about health, sex and happiness, with a foreword by Pauletta Washington, musician and wife of Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington, and endorsed by psychologist Dr. Jeff Gardere and others.
Copyright © 2011 Dr. Melody T. McCloud. All rights reserved. Any excerpts reproduced from this article should include a hyperlink to this-my original post on Psychology Today, with author credit. Feel free to post the link to this article to your social network pages.
