After last week I thought it might be worth the time to write a little more about the concept of agency. While it’s accepted we don’t always have agency over what happens to us (for obvious reasons), there is an idea that has become prevalent that we nevertheless have full agency over ourselves; that, no matter how hard things are, we can always choose how we respond to anything. Overall I think, (with nuance), this can be a healthy rule of thumb. Holding yourself accountable for your own life is at the heart of almost all religious teaching, and is necessary for society to be able to function.

However, without going into whether this is always possible under all circumstances for even healthy people to be in total control of how they respond to everything, I think it’s important to talk about agency and mental illness specifically.

When I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s if mental illness came up at all it was usually discussed as a consequence of bad behavior by the sufferer—taking drugs, being selfish, being a liar, those sorts of things coming home to roost. Overall the discourse around mental illness has gotten so much better; there is at least an awareness among many people that it is not always the result of sin or weakness, which is a huge step.

But there is often still a discomfort when it comes to the intersection of mental illness and agency. Much of my experience has shown that, while people know mental illness might make it hard to have agency over yourself, it is just that: hard. Not impossible. But do we always have full agency over ourselves? And do we even fully understand what it means to have agency to the extent we think we understand it? What does it mean when there are people who cannot always choose how they respond to things? Obviously there are different degrees of what people can handle—a person with mild to moderate depression and anxiety, for example, may have much more control than a person with schizophrenia. But it seems like there is deep uneasiness with the idea that there could be any situation where a person doesn’t have full agency. This post isn’t going to answer anything, but more to wonder if as a people we can dig a little deeper into our ideas of agency, and think with more complexity and compassions. As a people can we learn to tolerate unfairness, dependence, imbalance, and uncertainty without seeing them as failings and brokenness? I think we can and should, it just means wading into unclear, uncomfortable waters.