Christianity & Culture with Kierstyn St. John

John MacArthur claims mental illness doesn't exist

• Kierstyn St. John of Zoetic • Season 1 • Episode 2

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John MacArthur had a highly misinformed and dangerous take on mental illness during a Q&A panel with several other pastors. He claimed that all mental illness is a “noble lie”, specifically saying that there is no such thing as PTSD, ADHD, and OCD. 

I understand that MacArthur is elderly, but he has been saying these things for years and I think it’s finally time that he got significant pushback from scientific studies and literature. He has an enormous platform, and if they are going to continue to publicly platform him, he will be publicly criticized. These ideas cause people to suffer needlessly, not seek help when warranted, and shame others for their struggles.

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Kierstyn St. John:

Today I am going to talk about something that has happened in Christian culture and that is John MacArthur's takes on mental illness. That recently happened at a Q&A panel. He was on a panel with several other people. I want to basically debunk what he is saying about mental illness, because this is very, very important. There are a lot of young people leaving the church, a lot of people in my generation and younger leaving the church. This dismissive attitude is part of the reason why, and I also just think that, in terms of the scientific literature, he is misinformed. Let's get right into it. This is his thoughts on mental illness.

John MacArthur:

Psychiatry and psychology is finally admitting the noble lies that they've been telling for the last 100 years. And the major noble lie is there is such a thing as mental illness.

Kierstyn St. John:

So he just said that mental illness is a noble lie. He doesn't caveat that that includes, to be clear, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, OCD, PTSD, postpartum depression, as well as the other forms of depression, all of the personality disorders, etc. He did not caveat that, so he just said mental illness is a lie. The burden of proof is on you, John MacArthur, for that. There are so many psychological studies as well as just most people's personal experience, but a ton of psychological studies confirming all of these disorders that I would be here all day quoting them all. You have to prove this enormous claim that you have just made that mental illness does not exist, that it's a lie, a noble lie, as you call it. Let's hear him try to do that.

John MacArthur:

This isn't new. You have Thomas Sass back in the 1950s writing a book who is a psychiatrist on the myth of mental illness.

Kierstyn St. John:

Okay, so I will admit that I have not read this book. I have read a lot of books and I will explain why. I have read a lot of books, particularly on PTSD, cptsd. But he quotes one book from the 1950s, one psychologist. I wasn't aware that mental health research stopped after 1950, but I guess according to John MacArthur it has.

Kierstyn St. John:

You know, that's really just throwing out a book title and thinking that that proves the massive claim that you have made that mental illness is a lie, a noble lie that doesn't cut it. You need a lot more than that. You need to contradict some of the studies that I'm going to bring up here. I also want him to explain how it's a myth. He keeps calling it a myth. Is he implying that people are faking their symptoms, including like hallucinations, obsessive compulsions, the severe mood swings that go along with something like bipolar one? Is John and Carther claiming that people have the symptoms but they can't be coherently grouped into mental health issues? I also disagree with that. I think that these, a lot of these I'm not saying that every single thing in the DSM is verified truth.

Kierstyn St. John:

That's not my claim either. A lot of these disorders have been studied for years and years and years and that there are similar symptoms presenting in every case. Okay, that helps you classify it and that doesn't mean that people don't get misdiagnosed. But that doesn't it also doesn't mean that the disorders don't exist. So you can claim that some mental illnesses are improperly classified or that there are misdiagnoses. I'm not going to disagree with that. You can claim that medication is over-prescribed. I think there's a good argument to be made for that. What you cannot do is paint with an extremely broad brush and say all mental illness is a myth.

John MacArthur:

There's no such thing as PTSD, there's no such thing as OCD, there's no such thing as ADHD. Okay.

Kierstyn St. John:

Okay. So he goes on to say there's no such thing as PTSD, there's no such thing as OCD, there's no such thing as ADHD. Well, adhd is. It's debatable whether that is should be classified as a mental illness or a developmental disorder. People tend to put this ADHD into a developmental disorder. Other developmental disorders include autism, down syndrome and fragile X. So I don't know what John MacArthur's opinion is on those. If those are also all myths, it'd be pretty hard to argue that with something like Down syndrome. But I look forward to be a developmental disorder. So I'm not sure. I think he's speaking a little bit out of his league here. As far as I will speak mostly to PTSD, because it is the thing I have the most personal experience with and have done the most research on. He says that PTSD doesn't exist. So let's look at this.

Kierstyn St. John:

So Dr Bessel van der Kolk he wrote a really seminal work called the Body Keeps the Score. He did a study on trauma within PTSD patients. He did it to show observable, actual observable brain changes due to the trauma they suffered. So these are a few of the quotes from his book, if you can bear with me. Our study clearly showed that when traumatized people are presented with images, sounds or thoughts related to their particular experience, the amygdala, so the back of the brain, reacts with alarm, even 13 years after the event. Activation of this fear center triggers the cascade of stress hormones and nerve impulses that drive up blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen intake, preparing the body for fight or flight. Another quote here.

Kierstyn St. John:

Our most surprising finding in the study was Another quote here. In contrast this is the third quote activation of the Broca's area. Another region, brodman's area 19, lit up in our participants. These are the participants with PTSD. This is a region in the visual cortex that registers images when they first enter the brain. We were surprised to see brain activation in this area so long after the original experience of the trauma. Once again we were witnessing a brain region rekindled as if the trauma were actually occurring.

Kierstyn St. John:

And final quote the stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baselines. He's comparing them to non-traumatized people, people who don't have PTSD despite quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. So these are actual, observable brain changes in people who have PTSD that have occurred long after the initial event. And so to just claim it doesn't exist, you're going against some science here. If John MacArthur can provide contradictory studies, I'm open to that, but it's not looking great Again. If you want to make an argument that prescribers over-prescribe medications, john MacArthur, you can make that argument, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by stating that all mental illness does not exist and that there is no reason to go on medication, which is what he's about to say here.

John MacArthur:

Those are noble lies, to basically give the excuse to, in the end of the day, to medicate people.

Kierstyn St. John:

John MacArthur, what do you propose we do for these people? So you've already rolled out medication? You don't think we should do that? Okay, so John MacArthur has given solutions that he thinks could help people who have these disorders that apparently don't exist. According to him In his book, anxious for Nothing, he says within my own church we have started a ministry that trains our members in biblical counseling so we can lovingly help one another, apply scriptural solutions to our problems. He also feels compelled to warn about counseling that calls itself Christian but uses unbiblical means to solve anxiety.

Kierstyn St. John:

John MacArthur's answer to somebody who's presenting with symptoms of I guess of PTSD or OCD or ADHD or bipolar or schizophrenia is to go to an elder within your church ideally within his church to seek help for that, because he doesn't actually think that there's anything potentially wrong with your brain. It's just like again, with the observable changes that we've seen in the brains of PTSD people. The studies have shown and I'm sure that there are similar studies with bipolar and schizophrenia as well he doesn't actually believe that, and so it's a faith issue. You know, if you're presenting with these things and you just need to buckle down and trust God more and then these symptoms will probably go away. Maybe you can get some scriptural solutions from elders go away. Maybe you can get some scriptural solutions from elders. And so you see how it's an inadequate solution, but it's because he denies the problem in the first place, so he's not going to give a good solution to it, because he doesn't think there's a problem. So, yeah, he doesn't think you should go on medication, and he doesn't say it here, but he doesn't think that you should get Christian counseling outside of the church and so you have to go to biblical counseling and they're going to give you scriptural solutions.

Kierstyn St. John:

I love scripture. I am a very strong Christian. I believe that scripture is sufficient for salvation. I believe that scripture is our ultimate authority. But that doesn't mean that I deny common grace and that I don't think that there are things that trained psychologists and psychiatrists can do that can be immensely, that that trained uh psychologists and psychiatrists can do, that can be immensely helpful.

Kierstyn St. John:

Um, including medication sometimes. Um, it's, you know, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to help everybody, but it can be helpful. Um, I've seen that personally, uh, as well as uh other modalities that he doesn't mention because I doubt he has researched them, but EMDR, neurofeedback, even some forms and I'm going to be careful here but of hypnotherapy, provided that they're done under the, you know, counsel of a Christian therapist. You know there's all sorts of other treatment modalities that have been tremendously helpful to people, in addition to those people continuing to read their Bibles. So John MacArthur doesn't provide any solutions other than going to an elder in his church, and I just find that woefully inadequate for somebody who has bipolar, for somebody who has schizophrenia, for somebody who has PTSD.

John MacArthur:

Big Pharma is in charge of a lot of that, if you understand. Take PTSD, for example. What that really is is grief. You are fighting a war. You lost your buddies. You have a certain amount of survival guilt because you made it back. They didn't. How do you deal with the grief? Grief is a real thing.

Kierstyn St. John:

That is not correct. Ptsd is not a grief-based disorder. Ptsd is a fear-based disorder. The Mayo Clinic says this post-traumatic stress disorder, ptsd, is a mental health condition that is triggered by a terrifying event, either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. I already gave a study that shows observable brain changes, a decreased tolerance for stimuli that reminds people of the traumatizing event. To be diagnosed with PTSD this is, I believe, from the NIH an adult must have all of the following for at least one month at least one re-experiencing symptom, at least one avoidance symptom, at least two arousal and reactivity symptoms and at least two cognition and mood symptoms. So you actually need to meet a lot of criteria in order to be diagnosed with PTSD, and most of that criteria has to do with re-experiencing. And most of that criteria has to do with re-experiencing. And, by the way, I also want to clarify PTSD is not only more about fear than grief. It's about the fear of re-experiencing.

Kierstyn St. John:

Right, it's also not just for war veterans. People have very similar experiences after they get into brutal car accidents, after they have been raped, and I'm just talking about what I would call simple PTSD. You know, which are traumatic events that usually occur in adulthood, teenagehood, adulthood. There's also something that people are doing research on called complex PTSD, also known as developmental trauma disorder. So these are people who are raised in abusive environments or in incredibly stressful, chaotic environments as children, and they present with a lot of similar symptoms of PTSD. They actually present with a few additional symptoms as well. Wrong about what PTSD even is. That doesn't mean that there won't be grief if you lose someone, if you come back from war and you've lost someone, but that is not PTSD. Ptsd is re-experiencing. Ptsd is the fear and the constant re-experiencing through both nightmares and through triggers that happen throughout the day.

John MacArthur:

Real thing. But grief is part of life and if you can't navigate grief, you can't live life.

Kierstyn St. John:

So what, john MacArthur, get over it. Like, go to see an elder in your church, like, what is your solution to this? What is your solution? What do you say to someone? Because you didn't caveat about schizophrenia. So what do you say to someone who has schizophrenia? That they're sad, that they feel bad, that they don't read their Bible enough. If it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, this is incredibly damaging. It's incredibly damaging to the body of Christ. That is why I'm getting heated and that's why I'm making this video in the first place.

John MacArthur:

But if you clinically define that, you can give them a pill, a series of medications, and they end up in LA, homeless on the sidewalk.

Kierstyn St. John:

Okay. Does correlation equal causation there? Do you know for sure that the war veterans you're talking about a very specific group, war veterans of PTSD have ended up homeless on the sidewalk because they're prescribed what SSRIs? Is that your claim, john MacArthur? It's not because they took pain medication illegally or it's not because of the PTSD in and of itself, untreated PTSD, that has wreaked havoc? Wreaked havoc on their jobs, on their families, on their lives? You think it's because someone prescribed them Zoloft but they ended up on the street. Interesting Again. I would really like to see some evidence of that.

John MacArthur:

This is in regard to children. It's the most deadly thing that's been unleashed on children medication.

Kierstyn St. John:

I would agree that in certain circumstances children have been over-prescribed medication. That doesn't mean mental illness does not exist. You have thrown the baby out with the bath water so bad Like it's just. Yes, children can be over-prescribed medication. That also doesn't mean that no child ever needs medication. To society that Obergefell redefining marriage at a legal level has done tremendous damage to society, that our culture of birth control and leading to abortifacients and abortion has caused damage and made the single motherhood rate go up, he would agree with the degradation of society, okay. But then when I say okay, so the effects of that are an increase in severe mental symptomology, then he denies it and says that doesn't exist. So he's willing to acknowledge causes but not effects.

John MacArthur:

And I just don't understand that causes but not effects, and I just don't understand that. We um we're trying to make clear to parents that behavior is essentially the result of choices that kids make, and if you parent them properly, they'll make right choices.

Kierstyn St. John:

Not necessarily. I know plenty of examples of kids who've grown up in very well-adjusted homes and have made decisions to the contrary as they've gotten older. I also want to talk about ACE scores, because John MacArthur does not talk about this, ace scores. There's an ACE score test, basically, and it's called Adverse Childhood Experiences. Some of these include um there's like 10 different ones. Some of them include, like a child witnessing um, a parent being violent towards another parent, a child going through a divorce, a parent being um addicted to alcohol or drugs. You can you can get ACE scores based off of that Um, and I want to read about that. So a child with an ACE score of two or more, according to a study by Montana University, is 36.1 more likely to develop a chronic health condition. Adults with an ACE score from their childhood of four or more are 1,220% more likely to commit suicide, 1,003% more likely to use injected drugs, 390% more likely to have lung disease. At least five of the 10 leading causes of death are associated and positively correlated with high ACE scores.

Kierstyn St. John:

Okay, what is the point that I'm making? The point that I am making is he just said he was kind of talking on both sides of his mouth. But he just said that children are responsible for the choices that they make. Okay, I'm not saying that they aren't completely, but what I am saying is that we see that with the presence of severe trauma in the home there are significant consequences, behavioral consequences on children. And again then he says okay, we'll just parent them correctly and they'll turn out fine. They have a better chance, for sure. But it also can't be laid completely at the feet of the parent either. This study, I think, is extremely important.

Kierstyn St. John:

There was another study done in the National Library of Medicine called Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences, so ACEs, on the symptom severity of different mental disorders, which John MacArthur denies, they concluded. The results of this study strongly indicate that more severe negative experiences in childhood, so ACEs, predict more severe psychopathic distress in adulthood in these patients. Therefore, clinicians should pay more attention to the impact of negative early childhood experiences on adult mental health and illness. The results showed that childhood emotional abuse had significant impact on the severity of disease in the schizophrenia and OCD groups, again which John MacArthur denies. The relationship of the severity of the five mental disorders and childhood trauma was assessed with a multiple factor, regression as a risk factor. The higher the childhood trauma score, the more serious the mental disorder.

Kierstyn St. John:

Okay, what does that mean? Well, first of all, it seems to show that these mental disorders exist, which I can't. Even the fact that that could be denied is just. I'm incredulous about that. But regardless that there's also just this direct correlation, positive correlation between high ACE scores, high trauma in childhood and the development of some of these things, as well as the severity of them. But there is also a biological component to some of these things too, and this is why you can have a child grow up in a wonderful home and still obviously develop autism or ADHD.

Kierstyn St. John:

It's not necessarily the fault of the parents either. It's complicated. Can we just let it be complicated without painting everything with a broad brush and saying that an enormous amount of afflictions that people suffer with don't exist? So I mean people are going to say I'm strawmanning, but according to John MacArthur, a child who is molested by her father repeatedly, from ages two to seven, for instance Child who is molested by her father repeatedly, from ages two to seven, for instance is an example and, as a result, suffers lifelong nightmares, flashbacks, repetitive compulsions, hallucinations, drastic fluctuations in her mood. She's just sad, she just needs to go to an elder. If you're saying I'm presenting the marginal case.

John MacArthur:

There are people who have suffered unspeakable horror and they need to use every tool that they possibly can to continue living but if you blame it on something other than their choices and you identify them as having something they can't do anything about but medicate it, you literally are turning your child into a potential well, not only a potential drug addict, but maybe a potential criminal.

Kierstyn St. John:

Research has shown that the actual correlation between children becoming drug addicts, as I just said, and criminality is high ACE scores in the home, high trauma ACE scores. It is not a parent putting a child on an SSRI for severe ADHD, it is ACE score correlated. I am not saying we should over-medicate children. I am saying that these claims that he is making are unsubstantiated, severely so.

John MacArthur:

Because they never learn how to navigate life in a socially acceptable way. So the book deals with the ways in which children are being assaulted, and they're formidable because they're done by media and they're in the hand of every kid through the cell phone.

Kierstyn St. John:

I do have to say that John MacArthur's age is showing here, and I am not trying to be a jerk about that. He is just changing topics so rapidly. He's talking about his own book, basically, is what he's doing now. I don't like to pick on people who are elderly. They are the people parading him up there, they are the people putting him on this panel. Okay, so I have to be critical of it.

Kierstyn St. John:

A lot of people are really trying to go easy on John MacArthur. They say, oh, I love John MacArthur, but this is not great. I am not a huge fan of John MacArthur. I'm going to be really clear about that. I don't agree with him on most things Soteriology, eschatology, cessationism.

Kierstyn St. John:

This man has a tremendous amount of influence. He pastors a church of more than 7,000 people who attend weekly. His Grace to you radio airs in more than 1,000 times daily in more than 23 countries. He's written many books. He's ubiquitous. Like you know, the Bible clearly speaks about greater accountability correlating with greater influence, especially in the church, especially if that person's pastoring a church.

Kierstyn St. John:

This is very, very damaging. There are implications of this that are serious Young people who are experiencing severe mental health issues because due to a lot of factors, but due to the degradation of our culture, either they're going to feel completely alienated and unsympathized with by a very prominent figure in Christianity and they're going to leave the church, which I've seen happen with people that I know personally. People might listen to John MacArthur, have a severe mental disorder, go get no or very little help with their bipolar PTSD schizophrenia, not feel like they can get on medication because it's a lie, right Like John MacArthur said. I'm saying what he said, not what I think Get no help from any other treatment modalities and they could commit suicide. I mean, you're denying people from getting potential help because you're denying that the problem exists in the first place, john MacArthur. So the implications of this are very, very serious. People can leave Christianity because of this or they could yeah, they could commit suicide.

John MacArthur:

So the church has got to step up. We started a campaign called Grace for the Children. If you want to strengthen the church and I know it's true here you want to strengthen the church minister to the children.

Kierstyn St. John:

You mean the children who you believe are born wicked. John MacArthur, like what you said in your video in regards to, I mean, john MacArthur is a Calvinist. He believes in total depravity, he believes that people are alienated from God from birth and he literally I mean I'm going to play a clip right now of what he says about children he literally.

Speaker 3:

I mean I'm going to play a clip right now of what he says about children Whatever comes from the loins of man is wicked, because man is wicked. So I say to you nowhere then In the anatomy of a man or in the activity of a man is depravity more manifest than in the procreative act, because it is at precisely that point which he demonstrates the depth of his sinfulness, because he produces a sinner.

Kierstyn St. John:

Extreme cognitive dissonance would be giving him the benefit of the doubt. Also, in terms of protecting children, john MacArthur, you didn't protect children within your own congregation. I'm going to read an article from Christianity Today. It says last year, han Cho, an elder on the board as well as a lawyer, professionally concluded that Grace Community Church had made a mistake. The elders had publicly disciplined a woman for refusing to take back her husband, as it turned out, a woman for refusing to take back her husband. As it turned out, the woman's fears proved true. Her husband went to prison for child molestation and abuse. The church never retracted its discipline or apologized in the 20 years since. This was, I believe, from Julie Roy's website. She's a reporter.

Kierstyn St. John:

A follow-up story by the Roy's report revealed that even after David Gray this is the man was convicted in 2005 of sexually molesting his own children MacArthur and Grace Community Church continued to shun Eileen and support David. David Gray started a ministry while in prison, called Chains for Christ Ministries. In a 2012 ministry newsletter obtained by TRR, macarthur praised David Gray for his steadfast faithfulness in the midst of such a difficult trial and called Gray our missionary to the Corcoran State Prison. Today, gray is serving 21 years to life for aggravated child molestation, corporal injury to a child and child abuse. John MacArthur this man was convicted on trial for molesting his own children. His wife came to you begging her help and you ignored her and you let abuse child abuse fester in your own church. So forgive me if I don't take you seriously when you talk about protecting children.

John MacArthur:

Let the parents know you're you're going to work to protect the children.

Kierstyn St. John:

Like you did with Eileen Gray's children.

John MacArthur:

It's greatest concern. So I wrote the book along those lines. I was telling the guys earlier that several Christian publishers passed on it. They wouldn't publish it.

Kierstyn St. John:

Gee, I wonder why Maybe they've heard um about this, the scandal that you've tried so ardently to cover up which shows you how woke even christian publishing has become yeah, you're.

Kierstyn St. John:

You're the victim, john macarthur. You're the victim. Not eileen gray, not her kids, not every single person that you said doesn't actually have mental illness, including, again, again you made no caveats people with bipolar, people with schizophrenia, people with OCD Well, you did say that doesn't exist People with PTSD, which you said were sad. I want to read a quote from someone that John MacArthur really likes, john Calvin. Going to read a quote from someone that John MacArthur really likes, john Calvin. I'm going to read a John Calvin quote from his Institutes 2.2.15. Gavin Ortland, who I think is phenomenal, quoted this in his video in regards to this. I would encourage you to check that out. Also, dean Lentini of Underdog Theology did a video on this. It's really, really good too, but I'm going to read the John Calvin quote In reading profane authors, so this is non-Christian authors.

Kierstyn St. John:

The admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its creator. If we reflect that the spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, to God, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. Okay, so that's a little bit of tough language to understand. What is John Calvin saying here? He's saying you can find truth still in reading what he calls profane authors. He doesn't mean explicit, he means not Christian. In despising the gifts, we insult the giver. Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skillful description of nature, were blind? John MacArthur would, unless they agree with his position, and he found one guy from the 50s to do that. What is John MacArthur going to say to the research that I've presented? Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry in our behalf were only raving? What shall we say of mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Here John Calvin is comparing philosophy to medicine and to mathematics. He wouldn't hold to the position that philosophy, which is the grounding of psychology, is completely rotten to the core. He would say be discerning, and I think as Christians we should all. Am I sitting here saying that every single claim made by the psychological industry is we should just believe it without thinking about it? Of course I'm not. Of course this is the same industry that has promoted transgenderism and the mutilation of children's bodies, which I actually think is the biggest stain on this generation of children. So of course, I don't just take all of their claims at face value, but if you swing the pendulum too far, the other way you can also do tremendous damage. We should listen to John Calvin on this point and not reject or condemn truth through scientific study. John MacArthur does that here. He's speaking way out of his depth on a subject that he has not studied. He can't even provide a coherent definition of PTSD, and it does tremendous damage to the church.

Kierstyn St. John:

I want to end this video with a personal example. I've talked a lot about research because I think that's really, really important, and so I didn't want to start it. I didn't want to start this video with a bunch of anecdotal evidence or personal stories, but I will share a little bit of my personal testimony. I grew up in a very chaotic home. By the time I was 11, I had moved houses seven times. My mother is a former alcoholic. She is sober now. You know. Praise, praise, god, I have been to. Well, I'll say this.

Kierstyn St. John:

When I was a junior in high school, I was on my. I was on my seventh school, um, seventh new school and, um, I, I grew up in an abusive home as well. I was starting to have PTSD flashbacks my junior year CPTSD, emotional flashbacks and I was having panic attacks four or five times a day. My grades, which had always been stellar, were starting to slip. I was going to fail out of high school when I was 16,. Towards the end of my junior year, I wrote a suicide note. I printed it out, I left it on the desk in my parents' house in the den. Um, I, my mom, drove me to school that day and I tried to jump out of a moving car and kill myself and my mom, thank goodness, stopped that from happening. Um, and she had the sense, um to realize that I needed help, that it wasn't just, I was sad, I was living in hell. I was living, I was a living hell due to what I had gone through my whole childhood and, to her credit, she took me that day to to see a psychiatrist, a Christian, at a Christian office, and get into Christian therapy. I eventually got on a low dosage of Zoloft, my panic attacks decreased and it saved my life. As well as going to therapy. Since that point, I have done all sorts of different treatment modalities and they have helped me function and do what I do with Zoetic.

Kierstyn St. John:

If my mom hadn't done that, if my mom had listened to John MacArthur and saw medication as an evil always, or anything outside of just talking to an elder as not preferable, I wouldn't be here. I would have attempted suicide until I succeeded, and so I don't want to hinge all this on a personal argument, but it matters. It matters and I had to make this video. And I had to do it because so many young people are leaving the church and it's just because they feel like the culture has destroyed them in a lot of ways. It has, and when they go, seek validation and help from the church, this can be what they get, but it doesn't have to be. We can say hold fast to your faith. The scripture does bring comfort, the scripture does bring solace, but there are also real issues that can occur with the brain, real deficiencies, real brain changes that result both biologically and from trauma, and that sometimes just as if you were to go to the doctor for a broken leg you need additional help from common grace to fix that. That's where I'm going to end it.

Kierstyn St. John:

Thank you so much, and I would say again to people who accuse me of not having a background in psychology I have a background in experience. I've read a lot of literature on this stuff. Yes, I don't have a degree in psychology, my degree and my vocation is in music, but I've read a lot of literature on this stuff. Yes, I don't have a degree in psychology, my degree and my vocation is in music, but I've read a lot of literature. I've read a lot of scientific studies. I have researched this and I have lived it from the perspective of a patient and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And I'm grateful that Jean-Luc Harfier has not had to experience PTSD and I say that sincerely but I just hope that he can have some compassion for those who have. Thank you,