How Utah’s religious culture influences mental health

There is no doubt that Utah has a unique culture. Things like fry sauce, mountains, weird spellings of names, soda and sugar cookie shops, and summer vacations to Bear Lake are all second nature to Utahns. Another cultural distinction is the large number of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that live in Utah.

Culture can have a significant effect on people and their mental health. As mental health issues have grown in recent years, some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have had to balance managing their mental health with being active in their faith. This has brought challenges as well as positive learning experiences for those involved.

Harper Forsgren has dealt with many of these challenges, and she hopes to share her story and message with others. Forsgren is originally from Richmond, Utah. She attended Utah State University and recently transferred to Brigham Young University to continue pursuing her nursing degree.

She served as a full-time missionary in the California Anaheim mission. During her time there, she developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which continues to affect her after her mission.

Harper now lives day to day with PTSD, but she doesn’t let this define her. Instead, she uses her experiences to advocate for mental health and help explain difficult topics in Latter-day Saints culture on her blog, which she and her sister share.

In the beginning, Harper said it was difficult to want to be a part of the Latter-day Saint faith because she felt it had let her down.

“I didn’t have any desire to be active because for me, a big problem was that I felt like I was supposed to go on a mission, but then I came back and it gave me mental illness,” Forsgren said. “Then I felt like I was supposed to go to BYU and it made it worse.”

She explained that such doubts can create a feeling of isolation, and it can be hard to know your place within your culture. Forsgren has had to create her own way.

“I don’t necessarily feel like there was place for me, but I am making there be a place,” Forsgren said.

Feeling out of place is not uncommon for others within the Latter-day Saint culture who live with mental illness. Annie Romano is a psychology student at Utah State University. Romano experiences social anxiety. She explained that this can create difficult situations when trying to attend church services.

“I think, ‘Who am I going to sit next to? Who am I going to talk to?’ Sometimes I feel a distance from the gospel and I can feel forgotten and abandoned,” Romano said. “It is like, why do I have to deal with this? I literally have this disorder in my brain, and it feels so unfair sometimes.”

For many years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was silent on mental illness. There was an acknowledgement of physical disabilities, but those who were struggling on the inside weren’t sure where to turn.

“It feels like a physical debilitation, but it is in your brain and it is constant. The problem is people don’t know you have it, and that makes it harder,” Romano said.

In more recent years, Latter-day Saint officials have began to speak on the topic of mental health. Latter-day Saint leader Jeffrey R. Holland gave a talk at the October 2013 General Conference that confronted emotional health. In this talk, Holland stated, “However bewildering this all may be, these afflictions are some of the realities of mortal life, and there should be no more shame in acknowledging them than in acknowledging a battle with high blood pressure or the sudden appearance of a malignant tumor.”

Forsgren said that this was pretty groundbreaking for the Latter-day Saint culture. “We need to stop acting like mental health isn’t real,” she said. “If you have these mental illness, you need to go talk to someone and get help like you would if you were physically ill.”

Throughout their journey of living with mental health in Utah’s Latter-day Saint culture, both Forsgren and Romano have run into many misconceptions.

One misconception that Forsgren battled with was the idea that mental health is determined by “righteousness” within one’s religion.

“It is so unhealthy to hear and to promote this. I was a very obedient missionary and my mission still sucked, and that’s OK,” Forsgren said. A huge part of Forsgren’s message is that it is OK for someone to not be OK, and it is OK for an Latter-day Saint missionary experience to not be 100 percent perfect.

Another challenge is that people who are members of a religion will often feel that certain parts of their life were dictated by a higher being. Forsgren commented that in Utah, it is common to hear people say that bad things that have happened to them are a part of God’s plan. She said during her difficult times this was very damaging to hear.

She also explained that people many times only want to show the good and happy sides of themselves, when really it is not always so.

“People also always try to paint the best of themselves. You try to be so perfect, so you never paint the journey. You always just paint the outcome,” Forsgren said. “We don’t necessarily talk about the times where we pray and nothing happens. We are so worried with looking a certain way.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is adapting to recognize mental health challenges. Recently the church changed how many times missionaries can call home. Instead of twice a year, missionaries can now call home once a week. Many have cited that this change is to accommodate the mental health of these young adults.

“You are wondering why these missionaries are dropping like flies. You can’t cut them off from all of their support,” Romano said. “This makes the transition better and hopefully this will help them be not as upset or depressed on their missions.”

Forsgren felt that being able to talk to her mom and get support while she was in the field could have changed the course of her mission.

“I do not think these missionaries are soft at all,” Forsgren said, adding that she would rather be called soft than deal with what she does now.

Both women agreed that a cultural change in mental health perspective begins with just talking about it.

“We just need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and then eventually we can talk about it,” Romano said.

They encouraged those who are struggling to open up to someone, whether it is a journal, a close friend, or a professional. It is important to check on friends and truly ask how they are doing. For people to understand what they were going through, they had to share their struggles.

“I wished people knew that you are capable of feeling joy and also capable of feeling complete isolation and sorrow, and that’s OK,” Forsgren said. “For me, I started to actually feel like I was understood when I started talking.”

There are many resources available for those struggling with similar situations. To seek help, please visit campus resources here; for more information on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and mental health, visit here.

—shelby.black@aggiemail.usu.edu

@shelbsterblack