644: Missionaries Pt. 2 – Depression, Faith Crisis, Suicidality

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2016

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's interviewee was a graduate of Dartmouth University and a regular listener to Mormon Stories podcast when she decided to serve an LDS mission in 2012. Towards the latter half of her mission she began to experience depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation, due in part to a culture of perfectionism within Mormonism, along with doubts she began to experience as a missionary (primarily around LGBT and historical issues). When she informed her mission president of her depressive symptoms, he allowed her only three visits to a talk therapist.

Over time on her mission, she began to experience significant suicidal ideation, and on the final month of her mission was self-admitted to a psychiatric behavioral health unit/hospital. After her stay in the hospital, she decided that she no longer believed the church to be true, and terminated her mission service early (a few weeks shy of completion). While the LDS church attempted to make her parents pay her hospital bills while a missionary, her parents declined and threatened to sue the church if they continued with such insistences.

Eventually she decided to leave the LDS church, and has experienced significant improvement in her mental health, and elimination of her suicidality, as a result of this decision. At present, she is engaged to be married and works as a nurse at Planned Parenthood in California.

Transcript

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0:29.0	Thanks for your support.
0:32.0	The Kindly Light of Myth in Circling Glue
0:37.0	Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.
0:47.0	The Night is Dark and I am far from home.
0:53.0	Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John DeLin.
0:57.0	It is August 8th, 2016 and we are continuing our series on the Mormon Missionary Experience in the 2010s with a focus at least initially on Faith crises during the mission and the
1:15.0	early mission return.
1:19.0	Last week we interviewed Joshua Hesh.
1:26.0	Wait, Tesh, Joshua Tesh.
1:29.0	And now we are going to continue that series with Sage.
1:34.0	Oh my gosh, Sage, Sage Dalton.
1:40.0	And Sage's story is interesting for a couple of reasons. Maybe immediately one of the most interesting things about Sage's story is that she served in Joshua Tesh's mission.
1:55.0	So that's interesting.
1:56.0	But then also we are going to be getting a Sister Missionary's perspective and also Sage experience mental health difficulties while she was on her mission.
2:09.0	We are going to be talking about that.
2:12.0	And we are going to be talking about early mission return because she came home early from her mission.
2:17.0	So this is super exciting.
2:19.0	So Sage, good morning. It's 7.30 a.m. in California.
	...

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