FEATURE
“GOD’S WORD ALWAYS WINS” USING SCRIPTURE AS A WINNING WEAPON AGAINST DEPRESSION
T
BY FRANK STIRK
im Bergmann has found a winning strategy for Bergmann is not alone. Far from it. Mental health issues overcoming bouts of depression. “I battle them with impact thousands of Canadian men — and the numbers Scripture as intensely as I can. I work hard at trying to have grown to epidemic proportions. think right thoughts,” he says. “As men, we deal with depression more than we think “It’s like a battle going on. In one corner is the sometimes,” says Mark Vander Vennen, executive director depression — and it is a significant foe — but in the other of the Ontario-based Shalem Mental Health Network in corner is God’s Word. I quote God’s Word until the feelings of a separate PK podcast. “Depression in men can show up a depression start to abate. Sometimes this will take days. But little differently [than it does in women]. I think that has God’s Word always wins.” to do with shame. We all experience shame. How we as Just over a year ago, Bergmann became the lead pastor of men process shame is a huge thing. And sometimes in Alliance Community Church in Sylvan Lake, a town of close men, depression builds up in some of those other ways of to 15,000 people located about twenty-five kilometres west processing shame like being angry, irritable, controlling, of Red Deer in central Alberta. rather than sadness which is often how it looks in women.” The fact that he was mentally and physically able to take on Rubbing salt in the wound, Vander Vennen adds, is they his new role testifies to the healing that he’s experienced in his often feel the manly thing to do is bottle up their suffering. life. In a 2018 podcast with Promise Keepers Canada (and an “We’re told to man-up — don’t be vulnerable, don’t show your email update), Bergmann recalls that in high school and as a weakness, that sort of thing. And that doesn’t work. It’s young man, he was “strong and energetic and charismatic” and really tough for a man to be vulnerable, because it’s often had no problem being in front of people. Then in 1989, when he not terribly socially acceptable. I think as a society, we’re all was in his early 30's, he slid for the first time into depression paying a price for that.” compounded by an anxiety disorder. And together, he says, In fact, as The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry reported they “kind of did this terrible dance together in my soul.” in 2018, men struggling with their mental health “do not “It’s pretty intense,” says Bergmann. “It feels for me like perceive the need for care, immediate support systems do a steel ball the size of a medicine ball growing inside my not identify male-specific warning signs, diagnostic criteria chest. You feel like you can hardly breathe. You think some do not detect men with mental health problems, and men dark thoughts — 'Why am I here? What’s my purpose? I’d be delay treatment until problems are too severe to ignore.” better off if I wasn’t around’ — an overwhelming sense of Instead, many try to escape their darkness through sadness and darkness and despair.” excessive drinking, substance abuse, risk-taking — such
6 SEVEN WINTER 2020
