Darrell Mansfield - 'Emerging From a Nightmare'

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

Darrell Mansfield playing the harmonica

IRVINE, CA (ANS) -- Talented Christian blues singer and harmonica player, Darrell Mansfield, has issued a startling mental health wake-up call to the church.

After recovering from several suicide attempts, Darrell wants Christians to know that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. He has emerged from a nightmare that saw him try to commit suicide on several occasions and then ended up in the Atascadero State Hospital in Central California for two years.

Darrell joined me for an extraordinary interview for Safe Worlds IPTV, where he issued a message to Christians in which he said, "Don't be ashamed if you have a mental illness. You are not a second rate soldier for Christ. It's an illness; it's a disease -- just like -- diabetes and it needs to be treated. People need to know that when they get into a state of depression, there is help available."

For Darrell, he didn't know that at the time of his problems.

He went on to say, "Your illness is not a lack of faith, spirituality or commitment. It's a medical chemical problem. I think that society, the church especially, has got its head buried in the sand."

For years, Mansfield kept up a grueling pace of concerts and recordings that sapped his energy and drove him to attempt suicide. Now he is back on track with a new message to help people in the church, who suffer from depression and mental illness.

Darrell then told the story of how his music career started, after being an artist for a while:

"When I was eight years old, my mother bought me a John Nagy drawing kit [1950's TV art guru.] I would watch his TV show and draw with him everyday. By the time I had reached High School, I could draw anything and fast. I used to sketch my friends, classmates, and teachers all the time. I made money on the side by taking High School Senior photos and drawing them with water colors or pastels. It's called 'photo art' today.

"My drawings would look more 'real' and lifelike than the photo, because I was able to capture and add a third dimension.

"In my junior year of High School, the National Cancer Society had a contest to draw or paint a poster that they would be using for their National Anti Smoking Campaign. So I entered the contest and won first and second prize for the 'Nation' and won a scholarship to art school.

"I graduated from Fullerton High School in 1968, the year the Beatles came out with Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band. That is all that I listened to all summer long! I began drawing posters of the Beatles, (The) Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, and selling them in Laguna Beach and Hollywood 'head shops' and record stores.

Paul and Linda McCartney

"In 1969, I had the pleasure of meeting Paul and Linda McCartney in Hollywood. They were in a small recording studio behind Capital Records called Sound Recording Studios, where they were recording his second solo album called Ram. I sat with Paul and Linda, and showed them my portfolio. They were so nice and down to earth and not all 'heady' and rude like some stars and musicians I met back then. Paul asked me if I played any instruments and I said, 'Yes, I play a little guitar.'

"Also being left-handed, Paul handed me his 'left-handed guitar' and asked me to play. It was an experience I'll never forget. I left my portfolio with them at their request, hoping they would ask me to do some album or poster art for them. Ironically, I sent a girlfriend back to the studio the next day to fetch my portfolio and Paul and Linda were gone and so was my portfolio.

"I wasn't bummed about it at all. I felt it was truly fate meeting them -- a 'divine' appointment! Here, I was only 19 years old, and I had just met one of four of the most famous musicians on the planet, who had just left one of the most famous bands in the world to start his own solo career.

"So, I figured that if Paul McCartney could leave the Beatles and start over, then I could do the same. So I went out that next week and bought me a brand new acoustic 'left handed guitar' and never did 'art' again. Music became my life."

Darrell said that at that time, he was singing and playing guitar with his High School and College buddies at parties on the weekends.

"No one could really sing very well," he recalled. "I was the only one not drinking or doing drugs! Music was my high. I didn't need anything else to go with it.

"At the time, I was seeing a lot of bands up close, like Buffalo Springfield. Down at the The Whisky a Go Go nightclub on Sunset Strip, I saw the Doors and Janis Joplin.

"In 1969, I got started singing in clubs and bars in Riverside and Orange County, California," said Mansfield. Back in those days, I was playing mainly rock. I began playing the harmonica, writing my own songs and recording demos in LA. I was doing a lot of covers, and I met this guitar player who had a band called 'Free Flight' that was doing originals. His name was Dennis Carothers. It was his mother who witnessed to me. She gave me a Bible, prayed for me and said something I will never forget. When she handed me this Bible, she said, 'Don't take my word for it; take God's Word for it.' And she marked the Gospel of John."

It was in 1972 when Darrell finally gave his life to Christ and gave up his musical career for the time being. He attended Bible College and, each evening, he would attend Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa to sit under the teaching of Pastor Chuck Smith, who was the Father of the "Jesus People Revolution" in Southern California.

So what brought Darrell Mansfield back into music?

"I wrote some songs and Chuck Girard [from Love Song] offered some studio time to me for free up at Mama Jo's, which was one of the first independently owned and operated recording studios in North Hollywood," he said. "Everybody was recording there at the time, including Amy Grant, Ambrosia, Andre Crouch, Love Song and Petra."

Not long after this, in 1974 Mansfield joined a group called Gentle Faith as lead vocalist and two years later they released their first album called Gentle Faith on the Maranatha Music label.

"We toured all over the US, Canada, and eventually England," said Mansfield. "Our first concert in England was at The Royal Albert Hall in London in 1976, where The Beatles had played for the Queen in 1964. Wow, that was a major thrill.

"That next year I left Gentle Faith and began my solo career. I recorded and released my first solo LP called Higher Power, which was the first of over 30 albums I have recorded and released worldwide over the past 30 years."

In 1977 he formed the Darrell Mansfield Band, which released five albums: High Power, Get Ready, Darrell Mansfield Band; Live, Vision and Revelation.

That was only the beginning. Over the last three decades, Darrell has performed on and recorded so many projects on vinyl, cassette, CD (and even 8-track), that he said that he finds it hard to count them all.

"One thing," he said, "is I have always been impressed with the words that Jesus said, 'Whoever puts his hands to the plow and then turns around is not worthy of the Kingdom.'"

Darrell is a man who put his hands on the plow and just kept plowing. His consistency and love for the Lord always showed. In those days, Darrell Mansfield, Barry McGuire and the Second Chapter of Acts, were put on a bus and they literally opened 800 churches. Wherever they stopped, a thousand people showed up and soon another church was formed.

He said that when he started being a lead singer he realized he was no longer an entertainer. He had become a minister.

"That's why I studied the Word so much," he said. "We would take Chuck Smith's tapes on the road and listen to them. I knew I had to give more than just my testimony. God was calling me to be a musicianary. I was using music as a pulpit, a platform to preach the Gospel. Thousands would come to hear us and then give their lives to Christ. It was awesome.

But Mansfield said that his "constant touring" drained him and eventually led to his problems.

"I was absolutely drained," he said. "Looking back on it now, I was really being like Martha in the Bible. I was running around serving Jesus, but not sitting at His feet like Mary did. I really burned myself completely out."

What made things worse for Mansfield was that he was suffering from a series burns that were caused when boiling hot soup was accidentally spilt onto his feet as he lay in bed with the flu.

"I jumped out of the bed, pulled my socks off and the skin came with it," he recalled. "But I still kept going! I was in Whittier doing a concert when the pastor saw blood coming through my socks while I was performing. He asked me what had happened. When I told him, he called a doctor who prescribed some medicine along with sleeping pills and pain pills. I had never take pills, not even an aspirin before this. The only pill you'd find at my house would be a vitamin."

He said the medication he was given really "jacked" him up "pretty bad."

And as if that wasn't bad enough, his doctor discovered that he had basal cell cancer on various parts of his body that needed to be surgically removed. Once this was done, he continued with his draining series of concerts and recordings.

He said after "one particular stressful time," he flew back home to San Louis Obispo, California, with no sleep and had to drive to a youth convention some five hours away. Darrell recalled standing in front of a "group of these kids" and not being able to even talk.

"All of a sudden, I just shut down," Mansfield recalled. "I went into a real tailspin. I couldn't sleep or eat, and then I started having thoughts of suicide."

Mansfield then revealed that he made two attempts to kill himself.

"The first one was in my 5.0 Mustang," he said. "It was in the year 2000 and I got up to about 75 miles an hour, and unbuckled my seat belt which, ironically, was the thing that saved my life! I went off the road into a field and the car tumbled end over end. I went through the convertible roof that was up at the time, and landed face down in water. It just so happened there was an ambulance driving by. The drivers saw the whole thing happen. I knew one of the guys in the ambulance. He jumped over the barbed wire fence and grabbed me out of the water and took me to the hospital. It was a miracle that I survived and not one bone in my body was broken."

They immediately put Darrell in a 72-hour hold in a mental ward and gave him medication. At the time Darrell was married to Cheryl and they had seven children. She drove to the hospital to pick Darrell up and take him home.

But soon, he said, the suicidal thoughts were coming back again

"I knew I didn't want to go back to the mental hospital, so I told Cheryl that I needed to go and see the doctor at a mental health hospital in San Lois Obispo because, I had taken the wrong dose of medication. She was driving and the closer to the doctors we got to the city, the more freaked out I got.

"I was thinking that they were going to lock me up forever and I was going out of my mind and again thinking suicidal thoughts. Then, all of a sudden, I saw this large truck about 100 yards away, coming the other way. I thought I would just time it, grab the steering wheel in our Mercedes wagon, maneuvering it so it would hit me right on my door and it would kill me right away, and Cheryl would be okay.

"As I grabbed the steering wheel, I didn't calculate how fast he was going. We ended up hitting his door instead of him hitting my door, and it broke the driver's arm, but the guy who was riding shotgun had no injuries at all. Cheryl's seat went forward and she messed up her foot. The front of the car was totaled and the front windshield was shattered, but thank God nobody had been killed."

This was when Darrell ended up being treated at the Atascadero State Hospital for two years. As soon, as he began to get better, he began to talk to his fellow patients about Jesus Christ.

Mansfield said, "I remember my dear cousin Pam, who is a chaplain for women's prisons, telling me as she watched me witnessing. 'This is an inside job. The Lord's put you right where He wants you.'

"I had the right doctor and he took me off all this weird stuff. I began to realize that God put me in there to learn about mental illness and to pray for those who suffer from it. I became the friend of the patients and they trusted me, so I could turn to the staff and say, "Ok, now let me mediate for you.' So if there was something going on, they would talk about it and soon they started attending the therapy classes."

He was finally released and soon was being trusted to travel again. Darrell explained that the superior court judge would give him vouchers to travel. He said, "We need to see if you can do it without getting burnt out again."

"So I'm now going around the United States and also to Europe and Canada," he said.

But today Darrell Mansfield has an unusual aspect to his concerts. He ministers to people with mental illness.

He said, "I spoke at a youth leaders' conference a couple years ago, and I challenged every youth leader, saying, 'If you have a suicidal youth, someone who's threatening to kill themselves, or talking to their friends about it, or have these signs, what do you do? You can pray with them, and if it doesn't go away, what are you going to do? Do you have any doctors on your Rolodex, on your desk?'

"I've seen a real openness, and I get calls and e-mails every week from people who suffer like I did," said Mansfield.

Bob Noonan, Darrell Mansfield and Dan Wooding at Safe Worlds

Joining him for the interviewer was broadcaster and counselor Bob Noonan and so I asked him to comment on this situation of mental illness in the church.

Noonan replied, "I would say to people, read the Psalms. You'll see a man named King David, who I think could easily be diagnosed manic-depressive. Some days he's up here, some days he's way down here. And I think, when we're honest and open in a healthy church setting, people come around and can build us and encourage us.

"Just recently, I was with Darrell, and a young man came forward who was suicidal on that day. Darrell took him aside and said, 'You don't have to be alone, and he then gave him his phone number. When we reach out, we don't have to stigmatize. A lot of people in the church are covering (should this be recovering or covering up?) from mental illness by drinking a bottle of wine a night, doing pornography, doing anything to get a chemical rush in their body.

"The more honest we become, our Savior will help us. We are members of one body, and we need to be truthful with the pain and hurt, and know that we are not alone."

I concluded by asking Darrell to share his thoughts on mental illness.

"Well," he said, "if someone's out there and they're suffering, or if you're a parent who has a child, please call somebody, get help, medical help.

"Yes, have your pastor and have everybody pray. The mind is not just spiritual; it's an organ, and when the chemicals get mixed up, you need to be treated.

"I recently met a young missionary who told me that all of a sudden, his son started hearing voices, and he and his wife had a 'casting out demon party,' but guess what? It didn't go away. So he got help and he's on medication and he's doing fine."

Darrell today

Darrell Mansfield says he is now well on the road to recovery.

"I am still doing concerts and preaching," he said, "but now I'm learning to say no and I am not overextending myself. Now when I do teach and preach, I preach mental health along with spiritual and physical health. We are a three-fold being and if one gets imbalanced, it affects the other and we can't be effective for Christ if we are not spiritually, physically and mentally sound. We need to know those things and keep those things, and be in tune. So I am just thankful and praise God.

"When I minister now, I get people to come up to me and hug me. Many, in tears, say, 'Thank you for making me feel that I am not a second-rate citizen of heaven because I suffer from mental problems. You've encouraged me.' I've had people who have come up to me and told me that they are suicidal at that moment and say that they need prayer. I'll pray with them and then I'll tell them to go and see a doctor."

For more information on Darrell Mansfield, you can go to his website, which is www.darrellmansfield.com. To correspond with him, you can e-mail him at: darrellmansfieldrocks@yahoo.com.

Note: I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Dan Wooding, 67, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma of 44 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com. danjuma1@aol.com.