The widespread scourge of mental illness indicates an imperative need of understanding true mental health and how to maintain it. Mental health is mental self-control, and according to Christian Science, one expresses true self-control in the degree that he is controlled by God, man's source, or divine Principle. This Science reverses the general belief that mind is in the brain and is subject to chemical, physical, and electrical disorders. Denying the validity of a carnal, or mortal, mind, Christian Science affirms that there is but one Mind, God, and that man reflects the self-control of this Mind. Man is Mind's immortal image, God's reflection, which can never go out of control.

Health in any direction depends upon the demonstration of the eternal relationship of Mind and man. A realization of their inseparability as cause and effect brings the real self to light and helps to dispel the illusion of a mortal self controlled consciously and unconsciously by the intricate mechanism of a material brain.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy explains how the truths of Christian Science are applied to conditions of mental illness. She says, "The arguments to be used in curing insanity are the same as in other diseases: namely, the impossibility that matter, brain, can control or derange mind, can suffer or cause suffering; also the fact that truth and love will establish a healthy state, guide and govern mortal mind or the thought of the patient, and destroy all error, whether it is called dementia, hatred, or any other discord." ^{Science and Health, p. 414;}

Christ Jesus gave us an example of the demonstration of mental health in the case of a man who lived in the country of the Gadarenes. When the demented man threw himself at Jesus' feet, the Saviour asked the name of the disease, and the reply was "Legion: for we are many." ^{Mark 5:9;} And then Jesus healed the man, evidently without strained effort and without the element of time entering into the process.

The description, "legion," could apply today to the complexity of causes to which mental illness is now attributed. But the healing method of Christian Science is simple, and the realization of Mind's oneness and allness and of man's inclusion in Mind as its idea can destroy the multiplicity of errors that claim to cause derangement. This Science explains that the intelligence which is Mind is manifested constantly through Mind's idea and that intelligence never permits thought to go out of control. But intelligence must be and can be constantly demonstrated.

Electricity, which, according to human belief, plays a large part in brain action and sanity, is brought under the control of the one Mind when it is understood that divinely derived intelligence has dominion over nonintelligent electrical forces.

One who is caring for a case of insanity through Christian Science can helpfully apply the following instruction of Mrs. Eddy: "Electricity is the sharp surplus of materiality which counterfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth,—the great difference being that electricity is not intelligent, while spiritual truth is Mind." ^{Science and Health, p. 293;}

Instead of admitting the common, medical belief that depression, anxiety, rage, sensuality, and other ungoverned mental states are caused by electrical circuits in the brain getting out of control, Christian Science shows that evil states of mind—sharp surpluses of materiality—can bring on disorder unless they are corrected. But this Science never gives reality to disturbed mental states, and it stands firmly on the ground that evil is not mind and is not actual cause. Mortal mind is always the culprit in mental disorders, and its latent fears must be quieted and its character weaknesses eliminated if mental health is to be restored.

One need not believe that insanity is always the result of a person's sinful ways, for general beliefs of mind in matter, internal accidents, heredity, and deterioration may need to be denied instead. Whatever the specific claim of error may be, divine Love, the Principle of order and its controller, is sufficient to obliterate it. However, Love must be lived and worshiped; a merely theoretical application of scientific arguments will not heal. But Christliness will, and it is scientifically right as well as compassionate to know that a patient's true self is absolutely Christly and controlled by the laws of Love; that a disturbed mind has no reality and no existence in the Christ, the divine ideal.

The man out of whom Jesus cast the legion of false beliefs was later found "sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind." ^{Mark 5:15;} Christian Science has restored many victims of the belief of derangement to a healthy state of mind. Its adherents remember Mrs. Eddy's words, "The general craze is that matter masters mind; the specific insanity is that brain, matter, is insane." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 302.} When God's universal control of mentality is more widely understood, insanity will be unknown.

Helen Wood Bauman