Madness - 9781481300582

MadnessAmerican Protestant Responses to Mental Illness\nAuthor(s): Heather H. Vacek\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Baylor University Press, United States\nImprint: Baylor University Press\nISBN-13: 9781481300582, 978-1481300582\nSynopsis\nMadness is a sin. Those with emotional disabilities are shunned. Mental illness is not the church's [url] three claims are wrong.\n\nIn Madness, Heather H. Vacek traces the history of Protestant reactions to mental illness in America. She reveals how two distinct forces combined to thwart Christian care for the whole person. The professionalization of medicine worked to restrict the sphere of Christian authority to the private and spiritual realms, consigning healing and careboth physical and mentalto secular, medical specialists. Equally influential, a theological legacy that linked illness with sin deepened the social stigma surrounding people with a mental illness. The Protestant church, reluctant to engage sufferers lest it, too, be tainted by .