I remember there was once a time that being mentally ill meant that you were possessed by the devil and it frightened me. Even some illness like being epileptic, having paranoid schizophrenia, and depression long ago had a lot of families looking for priests to do exorcisms. We didn’t have the understanding back then like we do now. Thanks to the study of psychology and how the brain works by neurologists we can now say it is an illness not demonic possession which gives relief to the families and individuals that suffer from it because just imagine your whole entire family being ostracize for being possessed by demons, but remember that demonic possession is real and that not all mental illnesses are truly mental illnesses.

For some people, exorcism did cure them especially if they believe in it. Today it would be considered a psychological breakthrough to the scientists. What people failed to realize is that faith in anything can truly bring about results, whether it is a ritual of some sort, a religious practice or belief, it can work for believer. There are some mental illness for which there is no cure but for which medication is taken in an attempt to suppress it.

I remember it like it was yesterday, when I was just four years old and living with my aunt and uncle. There was this young lady no more than nine-teen years old who had just given birth to a baby boy. I don’t know how old the baby was for I was just a child and a baby is a baby; I didn’t know the difference that a baby could be considered months and days old. Anyway, my aunt and uncle’s friend was a minster and this young woman was demonically possessed and was brought to them for an exorcism. Something happened to her after having the baby that made her look like an old lady. I was a child and remembered the grownups speaking about a curse on her for going with a married man from England, it was supposed to have killed the baby, but somehow it affected her instead and she went crazy. How much of this was truth? I don’t know. It was the first time, as a child, that I ever saw and heard of something so frightening. The woman did look like an old wrinkly woman, but then again all grownups were old and wrinkly to me except children like myself. I saw them perform the exorcism with my own eyes. They stripped her naked and shaved her head and rubbed her down with now what I now to be olive oil. Myself, siblings, cousins and friends, even children of the minister were told to go far way and don’t come around the exorcism for whatever demon or demons on her could affect us and our innocence. But no, like normal kids, when we are told no, in our minds it means until you get caught, we had to be nosey, we went peeking into the church and what I saw give me nightmares. The woman was crying and screaming out like she was crazy and on fire or something and all her skin was pealing like she had bad dandruff of the skin and head; it was very scary. One day I remembered being left alone with this possessed woman. She was laying down in the church and the minster had to go for a few minutes which at that time for a small child who’s afraid it seemed like it was an eternity. I was  waiting for my aunt and uncle to finish speaking to the minister, all the other children were already outside playing. The truth is I wanted to get a closer look at the possessed woman while the grownups were distracted speaking. The woman got up and came to me and said, “hi little one,” and I paused for a second and then responded, “hi” scared out of my mind. She stroked me on the head and said, she was tired and will go back to sleep now. I wasn’t afraid of her anymore as I got to see her so close up, she was nice and polite and soft spoken. For the first time I felt like a grown up, I was left to take care of this lady and she spoke to me like I was a grownup telling me what she was going to do. I told her ok, and asked her if she needed some water to drink and she said yes, stoop down to my level as I give her the water to drink and her hands were shaking. I then realized that not only did she not have any hair on her head but no eyebrows also, first time I ever saw a woman with no hair, completely bald, dressed in what looked like a hospital robe, you know how scary that was for me as a child?

This lady, I found out later, was cured and went back to England. Her hair grew back and her skin was smooth and pale and she looked just like she use to very beautiful a model and the baby was growing well. I never saw her again after that day she had spoken to me, but her sister came over to my aunt’s house one day and told us how she was doing and I remember thinking when I grow up I want to be just like her sister, because her sister was the first woman minister I had ever heard preaching in a church and she was just as good as the men and powerful. She was also so beautiful. She was there for the exorcism and she ministered unto her sister.  I was peeking into the church when I first saw and heard her preaching and anointing her sister.

Now that I am grown I often wonder if she was just suffering from postpartum depression. And maybe the man lied to her and she only found out he was married after giving birth to her baby and she went into a deep depression. But I know what I saw and I can’t get it out of my mind, she was old looking and frightening, but after what seems like days or weeks of her being in the church, she was back to her self again. I could say it  was some form of possession because how could she have looked the way she did and then go back to being normal and beautiful? To me being so young it was said that children can sense things spiritually that some adults can’t and I felt something about her that frightened me, something evil and very disturbing.

Mental illness today is on the rise and what does it all mean? Is demonic possession affecting everyone and we don’t know it? Every century or millennium I believe when spiritual warfare begins it is because of changes in the realm of the universe energy which affects the world and everything within it. It’s like everything is out of control without  discipline, the balance has been disturbed because of change. It is faith in God that brings about the restoration of balance. Whenever we start moving away from God by doing our own thing I the midst of the change (growth), we begin to revert into the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve fell short where they were tempted to eat the apple by the devil so they can become like God. (Genesis 3:5) We are not to move away from God, but like Jesus become one with him. Moving away from God causes a disturbance and it all started with the devil when he moved away and in so caused us to also move away and has been causing this tug of war for millennium. Jesus being crucified is the mediator for now until his return to abolish the constant fighting and the balance is completely restored.

There was once a time where scientists believed that we walked on all four before we stood upright and that hair covered our entire body. We were a kind of  ape first then evolved, and whatever we didn’t need for our body, like the hair, our toes that were too long and so on with all kind of crazy ideas like the reason we are smarter than the apes or any animals is because our brains are bigger than theirs. So my question to them is because we have evolved once again and with technology this time that all things we used to do with our big brains we no longer need to because of it, is that why the development of our brains are lacking and so many of us is suffering from mental illness from a scientific point of view?

We can also consider some of the things that is affect the brains with mental illness like whatever chemicals they are putting in our foods, the air that we are breathing with all the pollutions, a high fever, brain damage from an accident, drugs, a tumor or some sort of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). These are all things we can take into consideration regarding why we suffer mental illness. But it all leads up to one thing: possession(the taking control of something).