The stigma surrounding mental health issues causes many Christians to hide their conditions, resulting in an epidemic of depression, even among pastors, says Sheila Walsh, a Bible professor and internationally renowned speaker.
In her book It’s Okay Not to Be Okay: Moving Forward One Day at a Time, Walsh shares her personal journey with depression and provides women with an eight-step guide to navigating this challenging experience.
Twenty-six years ago, while struggling with a clinical depression diagnosis, Walsh was hosting a Christian TV show and had learned to hide her despair and loneliness. She argues that depression massively affects Christians today and that breaking the silence surrounding mental illness is the solution.
She insists that mental suffering is treatable, but the tragedy is that those affected are treated as if there is something wrong with them, with their condition being diagnosed as a lack of faith when the real problem is a lack of the chemicals necessary for the brain to function properly.
Seeking treatment simply corrects this imbalance, allowing you to ultimately become “who God designed you to be,” says Walsh.
Navigating false beliefs about mental illness
Among Christians, the prevalence of misconceptions about mental imbalance and how it should be addressed is bewilderingly high.
According to a 2013 survey of 1,000 people by the Christian organisation Lifeway Research, one-third of Americans and 48% of those who identify as evangelical, fundamentalist, or born-again Christians believe that serious mental disorders can only be resolved through prayer and Bible study.
Half of those aged 18 to 29 believed that the cure for illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder should be purely spiritual. By contrast, the proportion of people with the same belief in the 55–64 age group was less than 30%.
Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, is concerned that Christians treat mental illness as a character flaw rather than a medical problem that needs to be addressed holistically.
“They forget that the key part of mental illness is the word ‘illness,'” says Stetzer, complaining about the double standard that some Christians operate under: they go to the doctor if they break their leg, yet believe that mental illness can only be cured through prayer.
Archibald Hart, professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, points out that the most responsible attitude towards someone showing signs of mental distress is to refer them to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Even if a person has both spiritual and mental health issues, referral to a specialist is still the only option because resolving the illness will effectively address the spiritual issue, emphasises Amy Simpson, author of Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission.
Mental illness does not bypass leaders
The stigma attached to a pastor diagnosed with depression, for example, is directly proportional to the pedestal on which churchgoers have placed him. The reality is that not even this category is immune to mental disorders or even suicide. Chuck Hannaford, a psychologist working for the Southern Baptist Convention, says that he has seen an increase in the suicide rate among pastors in his 30 years of clinical experience.
According to Hannaford, pastors are particularly prone to downplaying depression or treating it as an exclusively spiritual problem, especially in fundamentalist circles. As role models for their communities, pastors often find themselves too isolated to communicate the problems they are struggling with.
“My dad had no one to talk to. Everyone talked to my dad. He was the only pastor in the church,” says Craig Sanders, recalling the life of his father, a pastor who had mentored many other pastors but ultimately took his own life. A 2015–16 survey by the Schaeffer Institute found that 52% of pastors felt unable to meet their churches’ unrealistic expectations, and 56% did not have a true friend. Pastors also confessed to feeling discouraged (34%) and depressed or tormented by feelings of inadequacy (35%).
Pastor Tony Rose says that he has not found anyone among contemporary religious leaders who addresses the issue of mental illness profoundly, and that it was John Bunyan’s writings that helped him to discover his own vulnerability to both illness and spiritual failure. Rose, who has struggled with deep depression, says that this is a model that is no longer found among today’s leaders, who build a perfect image for themselves, both in everyday life and online.
He believes that the church must become a place of healing, where people can reveal their problems without being accused of a lack of spirituality, and where they can be directed to specialised help when they are unwell. Rose believes that helping the church to become such a place would be “the win of a lifetime.” However, this is a difficult goal to achieve given that church members, especially pastors, feel they need to hide when seeking professional help, as Rose did.
However, psychologist Chuck Hannaford emphasises that humanity’s fall into sin has affected everything, including our brains, which is why mental suffering should not be a cause for guilt and despair any more than physical suffering.
When we are tempted to apply ‘spiritual makeup’ to the scars of the mind, we should remember not to appear to be anything other than who we are or who we have been asked to be. Sometimes we are confused about what it means to be like Christ, forgetting that the real Good News is Him, not us.
