More Effective than Psychiatric Treatment
◆ In 1959 a woman in Connecticut began to receive psychiatric treatment. She was plagued with marital problems, physical ailments, severe mental anxieties and excessive use of alcohol. By 1960 her condition got to the point that she committed herself to a mental hospital.
In treating her emotional condition a doctor prescribed a number of tranquilizers. She asked him how long she would have to take these pills. He replied: “Perhaps the rest of your life.” Over the course of the years she repeatedly was in and out of clinics that try to help alcoholics. Marriage counseling and psychiatric treatment seemed to help little. In addition to alcohol, she became dependent upon sedatives. Her marriage deteriorated and her family and friends had little to do with her. Things went from bad to worse until she actually attempted suicide.
As she was recovering in the intensive care section of the hospital, she resolved to search for God and try to make peace with him. Upon returning home she took out and began to read some Bible study aids that she had acquired from Jehovah’s witnesses years earlier.
Not long afterward a minister of Jehovah’s witnesses preaching from house to house met her and began regularly giving her Bible instruction. Before long she commenced attending meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses. She sincerely tried applying the Bible counsel to her own life. Though she still had difficult problems to cope with, she did not want to use alcohol or tranquilizers again, taking the view: “I don’t need them. I have the truth and Jehovah to turn to.”
What about the psychiatric treatment that she had been receiving off and on for some ten years? The psychiatrist finally said to her: “It won’t be necessary for any further appointments. Jehovah’s witnesses are doing more for you than we can ever do.” In time she became a baptized minister of Jehovah’s witnesses. Now she is finding great joy in helping others to benefit from the Biblical assistance that proved more valuable to her than psychiatric treatment.