Robyn Bloem

Robyn Bloem. (1955-) When my husband and I had been married for six years and had three children, he became suicidally depressed. He had just been ordained as a Baptist Minister and we were supposed to be heading for our first pastoral ministry. We had to tell the search committee from the church who wanted to call him that he was sick and could not accept it.

This was in 1985 and this one event not only changed the course of our lives, but of our ministry. As Steve painfully survived the horror that had become his daily life, I tried to hold the family together. We had three young children; a son five, a daughter three and our brand new baby. My husband paced, and cried and could not pull himself out of it. The man I loved, who sang, whistled and played with the kids had become strangely incapacitated by this illness. His depression was a horror for him but reaction from our Christian brothers and sisters was becoming my nightmare. I had so little support. Friends kept asking me what I REALLY thought was wrong with Steve; was it anger turned inward? Was it demon possession? If it was physical, wouldn't the medications be working?

Then I had no answers but thankfully over the years, we have found them. Our book, Broken Minds is the story of our faith, our lessons of depression, science and God's truth concerning it. It is personal but also instructive. If you are a believer and have mental illness, you will find no blame in our book. If you have a loved one with mental illness, we pray you will be encouraged and helped to learn what is really happening in their battered brains.