Depression and Nouthetic Counseling

By Johnny V N Chong Ph.D

Currently, the author is a professor of the faculty of Chinese Christian counseling at the Triune Biblical University. He is also a professor of the faculty of Chinese Christian counseling at the Grace Theological Institute. The school is in partnership with the University of America / Salt Lake Baptist College / Salt Lake Bible College (SLBC) and is fully accredited by the Accreditation
Service for International Schools, Colleges and University (ASIC UK), where it is listed as the University of America. ASIC is a UK-based accrediting agency that is part of the U.S. Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).
SLBC, on the other hand, is recognized by the National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education as a participatingschool
in their Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) program.
Theological accreditation is through the Baptist Schools Accrediting Association
(BSAA) and is recognized by the State of Utah as a private college. It is listed in the state UEN (Utah Education Network) listings for Higher Education-Private.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493133376

Johnny V N Chong Ph.D

Dr. Johnny V N Chong holds a doctor of philosophy in psychology and Christian counseling from the Louisiana Baptist University, United States. His master’s in religious studies is from Nations University, United States. Aside from this, the author also holds a bachelor of law degree from Kensington University’s College of Law, United States. Although the author is not considered a registered clinical psychologist or a licensed counselor under the Malaysia Medical Statutory Legalities, he holds full memberships in the Malaysian Mental Health Association (MMHA)and the National Association of Christian Counselors Malaysia (NACC). He is also a member of American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC). His work is mostly on the academic side as opposed to medical science. As such, he does not carry the title of a counselor. Despite this fact, he still continues to work tirelessly to share his biblical counseling knowledge within the church and the Christian community whenever and wherever his skills are required as a speaker by voluntary invitation.

Book preview

Depression

And

Nouthetic Counseling

Johnny V N Chong, Ph.D

Copyright © 2014 by Johnny V N Chong

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Rev. date: 02/19/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

527153

Contents

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Preface

Chapter I: Introduction

1.1 Background

1.2 Research Problem Statement

1.3 Overview of the Problem

1.3.1 The Evidence of Depression in Society

1.3.2 The Evidence of Depression among Church Leadership

1.3.3 The Evidence of Depression among Church Laity

1.3.4 The Problem of Multiple Approaches to Depression

1.4 Multiple Diagnosis-Theories of Depression

1.5 Multiple Treatment Practices for Depression

1.6 Summarization of the Problem

1.7 Research Aims and Objectives

1.8 Research Questions

1.9 Research Hypothesis

1.10 Research Scope

1.11 Significance of the Study

1.12 Organization of the paper

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 Christian Rejection of Secular Therapies

2.2 Nouthetic Counseling within Christian Therapy

2.3 Historical Evolution of Christian and Nouthetic Counseling

2.4 Overview of the Nouthetic Counseling Approach

2.5 Intervening Developments

2.6 Current Conflicts between Nouthetic/Biblical Counseling and Accommodationists/Christian Counseling

2.7 Counseling Clinical Depression: Nouthetic versus Contemporary Christian Counseling

2.8 Nouthetic Counseling

2.9 Biblical Counseling: Counseling nouthetic

2.10 Nouthetic Evaluation

2.11 Progressive Approach

2.12 Progressive Evaluation

2.13 Benefits of Counseling and Biblical nouthetically

2.14 Conclusion

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Literature on Methodology

3.3 Pilot Study

3.4 Research Questions

3.5 Study Design

3.6 Information and Data Gathering Procedures

3.7 Study Sample and Selection Criteria

3.8 Information and Data Analysis Procedures

Chapter 4: Data Collection and Analysis

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Statement of the Problem

4.3 Purpose of the Study

4.4 Research Questions

4.5 Participants

4.6 Instrument

4.7 Procedures

4.8 Confidentiality

4.9 Data Analysis

4.9.1 Rationale for the Research Design and Statistics

4.9.2 Ethical Considerations

4.9.3 Limitations

4.9.4 Statistical Results and Interpretations

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Summary

5.3 Conclusion

5.4 Recommendations

Works Cited

Appendix

Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my family for giving me the opportunity to study. My special thanks to my brother, Yun Ngen Chong, who is an artist, for providing all the original watercolor paintings in this book.

I would also like to thank my supervisor for helping me identify the key areas in this material.

Thank you to all the group interview participants and survey respondents. The information you provided greatly contributed to the realization of this endeavor.

Dedication

This work is dedicated to the following individuals, without whose support, this book would not have come to fruition: First, I would like to thank God for giving me the strength to persevere through this entire process. I dedicate this project to the pastors in my life who have counseled me to stand up and be a man of God whom He can use for His glory.

Preface

Depression is one of the most prevalent mental problems facing society today. This research will focus on a treatment for depression. There are many treatments available for depression, such as psychological therapies, that millions of people worldwide undergo. Their costs alone amount to billions of dollars, but they do not seem to provide any relief to those suffering from depression. As such, this research will not be focused on the psychological therapies for depression, but on what nouthetic counseling is instead. This type of counseling is based on precepts found in the Bible. It is a response to the secular therapies that do not seem to address what is causing depression and therefore do not offer any solution for it.

This type of counseling has been around since biblical times, and God’s people have been counseled nouthetically for thousands of years. The term itself comes from the Greek noun nouthesia, which translates to admonish, correct, or instruct. Nevertheless, because of the prevalence of secular therapies for depression, the practice has become less used until it gained prominence through the work of Dr. Jay Adams, who elucidated the concept as a new perspective in Christian counseling for depression. The approach makes use of three ideas: confrontation, concern, and change. The research will outline and elucidate the approach in further detail.

Nevertheless, the focus of this research as a whole is to prove this researcher’s hypothesis: nouthetic counseling has a very positive effect among sufferers of depression. In order to prove this hypothesis, the researcher formulated several aims and objectives in order to support the hypothesis, such as finding the importance of nouthetic counseling for depressed people in terms of their mental health and behavior, identifying the way nouthetic counseling affects people with depression, and analyzing the positive influence of nouthetic counseling on depressed peoples’ mental health and behavior. Conversely, the research is also aimed at assessing the negative influence of nouthetic counseling on the mental health and behavior of depressed people and evaluating the role of nouthetic counseling on depressed people possessing other mental disorders.

The research tackles several topics that are related to therapies for depression, which can be found in several sections. Topics such as depression in society, depression among church leadership, and depression among church laity will be revealed. This research will also tackle concepts such as problems associated with multiple approaches to depression, the practices involved, and the theories associated with it.

Much of this study is based on the qualitative approach. The data gathered was collected by mailing a research designed questionnaire seeking to examine the influence of nouthetic counseling on depressed people as theorized by Dr. Jay Adams. These pastors were asked to complete the said questionnaires. Of the eighteen pastors contacted for this study, only thirteen replied. As such, their replies were made the basis for this study through a qualitative analysis. Because of the nature of the study being based on the Bible, no primary data was collected. Furthermore, minimal quantitative data was collected for the purpose of clarifying the results of the data collected. Baseline data was also collected and analyzed for further research.

In relation to the completion of this research, the author would like to express his sincerest gratitude to his family for doing all they can and offering their support so that he could study. Also essential to the completion of this study is the researcher’s supervisor, who helped him in identifying the key areas of the dissertation. Finally, this research would not have been possible without the help of the group interview participants and survey respondents who provided invaluable information for the completion of this study.

chapter1.jpg

CHAPTER I:

Introduction

1.1 Background

There are a lot of traces of Nouthetic or biblical counseling in the religious book of Christians i.e. Bible. The Bible is full of counseling techniques to handle or reduce depression. I was afraid (Gen. 3:10) were the first and the foremost words spelled by man after his fall having some unique characteristics of humanity thereafter. Emotional bondage has various victims in which mankind rests on the top. The proofs for the righteousness of these facts can easily be found in our society today in which Americans are spending more than $17 billion for treatment of various psychological therapies annually. Additionally, there is an identification of more than 250 psychotherapies in this profession. (Zuck 1991 467)

One of the most popular and prevalent psychological problems, depression, is having an impact on every person either by personal experience or through family history. There is no way of estimating the cost of human sufferings. It is a well known fact that depression has a deep effect on normal human functioning and suddenly results in problems with social, work and family adjustments. Depression is such a dangerous phenomena that it results in pain and suffering to the patients as well as for those who are the well-wishers of the sufferers. Severe depression will destroy life of any family. The impact of depression is clearly in the workplace productivity and absenteeism is common obviously, this will in turn have a dangerous and serious effect on the economy.

Once identified, the majority of people suffering from depression diagnosis and treatment success. (Wuest 1950 877) It’s unfortunate that the diagnosis of depression is very difficult and most of the times it is not diagnosed. This is due to the prevalence of symptoms which are common for other diseases as well. Nearly two-thirds of depressed patients did not receive proper understanding of the treatment of depression is a vague and subjective process. Clinical depression is a very common psychological problem, most people never seek proper treatment, or seek treatment, but they are physical illness misdiagnosed. It is very unfortunate; because with proper treatment, nearly 80% of people with depression can adjust their mood and their life improve significantly. (Wolff 1974 543)

It is very common among people to experience emotionally down time which, in general terms, is called the blues. In the severe state, people are so emotionally down that their routines of life as well as normal functions are interrupted. This severe state is generally called depression and is way different from the blues as in the blues; the normal functions of life are not being interrupted. According to some recent statistics, people suffering from depression have doubled their strength during the past five years from 20.43 million to approximately 40 million. This normal life function interrupting state which generally is called depression has been very evident in Scripture. According to David, this state can be defined as My heart is sore pained within me (Ps. 55:4). The effects of this state have been identified by David, which according to him, are the same as the depression symptoms. Additionally, he suggested that the Bible records emotional despondency as the reason for social problems related to depression today. (White 1982 78)

1.2 Research Problem Statement

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of Nouthetic counseling on depressed people.

1.3 Overview of the Problem

Broad reference for depression exists in society both medically as well as historically. Additionally, the count of Christians suffering from depression is approximately in thousands. So, it is evident that the incident of depression is extremely high in North American society.

1.3.1 The Evidence of Depression in Society

There are various clinical studies which supports the incident of depression in our society. Approximately, 17.1% of Americans suffer from major lifetime depression and approximately every woman in five and every man in seven have the capacity to suffer from depression. According to some more estimates, more than one fifth man in America have the probability to suffer from some major form of depression during their lifetime and the ratio of depressive disorder exceeds over one in every twenty Americans. (Virgo 1987 546)

There are no limitations of age for depression. It can easily be found in persons of any age. According to a recent clinical study, low care, characterized by adverse parenting is a very prominent and important risk factor in children for depressive disorder. Various researchers and writers in the field of medicine have affirmed to this fact. Joseph Teicher in his book Depression in Medical Practice pointed out that in young children, one of the major causes of depression is sleeping and eating disorders as well as hyperactivity. This is caused by self-depreciation feeling, self-esteem loss and feeling of guilt in children. Exposure to depression increases during the years of adolescence. (Collins 1988 76)

According to Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, as the child enters into adolescence, the rate of depressive symptoms increases which gives rise to increased depression. As an example, we can quote Kandel & Davis (1986) who identified that from the group of 762 adolescence, 21% of respondents scored 15-16 in the range of depressive symptoms. This figure is significantly higher as compared to the one for pre-adolescents which was 15% in the depressive range. (Christensen 1963 34)

Thus, from the above studies, we can say that rate of depression has some very conflicting opinions for aged people in the society. According to Nolen-Hoeksema,