Do I Lose My Value or My Personhood If I Develop Dementia or Severe Psychosis, or Another Serious Mental Condition?

It’s usually as you’re going into a severe mental illness that involves loss of logic, and after you’ve started coming out of one with treatment (such as psychosis), that a person will have the understanding and the cognition to ask this question. This is the question you can’t really ask when you’re in the midst of it, because to be severe enough to feel the need to ask the question – to really think your personhood might be gone – you will be so severely compromised you won’t be able to think logically enough to ask the question. It’s a question that comes up when someone is in the mid-stages of dementia and they know what kinds of symptoms they will encounter in the future. Psychotic symptoms are not as well known, and it’s more common for someone to slip into psychosis and not know what’s happening, and then lose awareness and insight, so this is why fewer people with psychosis ask this question in the beginning stages of the illness than those with dementia.

It’s also a question those in the mental health field or family members of the mentally ill may ask. The person they once knew can really seem to be fragmented, or nearly gone completely, and they may ask how God views that person in an ontological sense in such a condition.

Human beings have a lot of opinions and philosophies about personhood. But what does the Bible teach about what personhood is, and whether it can be lost, and if so at what point this occurs?

I remember feeling a sense of worthlessness while psychotic (this can be psychological and this feeling can also be due to biochemistry and not be psychological in origin. I think I had mine from both sources), but I didn’t know I had a psychotic disorder. I think my mind was really trying to ask whether I’d lost value due to psychosis, but I wasn’t aware I had psychosis so I couldn’t fully frame the question. I knew something really wrong had happened to me though, that felt like a death of the self. I was very sad and weighed down with a sense of loss.

It wasn’t until I’d come out of psychosis with lithium, but still had a few delusions and symptoms I struggled with left over like dissociative symptoms, that I started to fully ask this question and study into the Bible to see what it said on the subject. I didn’t really believe I’d lost value, but I wanted to have a “thus saith the Lord” to confirm the position that seemed right and that really seemed like it must fit with God’s character of love. I needed to know for sure.

Many severe mental illnesses (SMI) cause a fragmentation of the self. You feel like your psyche is in pieces. You may also feel like part of what makes up the self is missing, or disjointed, arranged in the wrong alignment. This happens because our brain is what makes up our self. It composes all of the attributes and functions and perceptions that give us self-hood. When these parts of the brain aren’t operating according to how they were designed and they malfunction, experiencing reduced blood flow, connectivity problems between the regions, problems with neuro-signaling, excess inflammation, and problems with electrical impulses being too high or too low, it isn’t just a superficial malfunction like when a computer malfunctions. Since a human being is a deep and spiritual being, when that person’s brain malfunctions, all the deep desires and wants and psychology of the person also suffer malfunction. Thus someone with a SMI suffers terribly, and not superficial pain, but deep psychological pain.

The brain is a magnificent creation of God, and when malfunctioning, it can create a reality that is nothing short of terrifying, at times being incredibly creative and dark at the same time. It’s common for people with psychosis to see and hear the types of things fitting for a horror film, the high adrenaline and inflammation giving them a bad trip. They are also highly creative individ