Dear Church, Please Don’t Turn a Blind Eye to Mental Illness

Dear Church,

You’re hurting, and I see you.

This is a problem. The pandemic of depression, anxiety, and crippling mental illness will not discriminate. Church, you are in the world, and the world is susceptible to brokenness. You are not immune to a broken spirit or a broken body.

It is not enough to pray, church.

It is time to act in obedience to Jesus.

I’m eyes-wide-open awake to the prevailing taboo that haunts many in the body of Christ.

Let me clarify before any conclusions are drawn: the church is right about spiritual warfare and its reality in the world around us. The church is also very misguided about mental illness and its reality in the church. 

The brain is an organ, just like any other, that can be sick. Spiritualizing serious mental illness that is rooted in a biochemical brain disease is a fragile thing. Some in church leadership like to illustrate depression as a valley of emotional and spiritual-inflicted scars. Some in the church would like to ignore it. Others would advise with prayer and/or “do better” methods of pop-psychology blended with scripture.

I am not saying to not pray, work on methods of cognitive reconditioning, attitude adjusting, or self-reflection. I am a firm believer in choosing your attitude and working through times with honest reasoning in light of God’s truth in scripture. I am also an absolute believer in the power of prayer to help move mountains.

Moving Mountains Begins with Reasonable Faith, Not Blind Faith

There is such confusion, and dare I use the term we do in advocacy — anosognosia (lack of insight) — in the church towards the mind, body, brain, and spirit. It is staggering that we ignore one at the cost of another.

The potential opportunity that the age we are in poses to the church is monumental. We can pray to receive the life-giving power of Christ through his Holy Spirit, and also obey to receive the life-sustaining grace of compassionate care, treatment, and therapies.

Psychiatric medications are a grace. To those who suffer from clinical depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and neuropsychiatric brain illnesses, they are a true Godsend. We need them like a diabetic needs their insulin medication. They are our lifeline.

Guess what, church. God answers prayers of hopelessness, despair, and the temptation to end our lives with antidepressants and antipsychotics. Psychotropics are life preservers. Psychiatrists are essential to those with SMI (Serious Mental Illness)/SBD (Serious Brain Disorders).

It is tempting to want to spiritualize mental illness first. The spiritual is the underpinning of our very existence, as we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. But those physical bodies are prone to sickness, and when the faculties located in the same organ the spirit exists are compromised, it’s literal and figurative gray matter.

The brain is the seat of the spiritual, mental, emotional, intellectual, cognitive, neurological…you get the picture. When I suffered from episodes of psychosis when I was off medications, the spiritual was taken advantage of. It is the same tandem bicycle we ride in life – the mind and the heart — that, without proper alignment and foundations of physical and spiritual nourishment, we go off the rails.

We need to embrace both biblical and evidence-based approaches to living out our faith and loving others as Christ loved us.

The Miracle of Medications

Most people I know do not experience miraculous cures from their major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or schizoaffective disorder. I am venturing a great guess, but I would imagine the cases of those praying their way out of their illness and God answering their prayers sans medically necessary treatment are as common as those who are miraculously healed of their diabetes or cancer.

I do not claim to know the rates of miracles that God performs in this post-Christ-on-earth age. I also don’t claim that it’s out of the realm of the possible. In my 36 years of life, however, the miracle of prescription psych medications is still very real for me. When I wake each morning and wash those 2 psychotropics down with that morning cup of coffee, and can function within normal range, that is my evidence. Instead of suffering in debilitating depression, I stride in joy and confidence. Instead of manic euphoria, I sing out praise in my right mind. Instead of psychotic hallucinations and beliefs I am King David, I live in the reality of Katie Dale.

I know God is in the details. The chemistry in my brain is running smoothly on all cylinders and is the proof.

I also know as much as signs and wonders have been exploited, people, especially of this generation addicted to screens, are hungry for encounters with the Living God.

God and science are not juxtaposed. The Bible and psychiatry are not contradictory. The church and therapy are not contrary. So much of what is in the Bible supports sound therapy practices. And vice versa.

The basic truths of a God who created mankind, and a humanity that studies the way it behaves are not exclusive of one another.

Solid Solutions to Spiritual and Physical Maladies

To bring these two seemingly different and irreconcilable concepts together is my aim. How might that look?

Church, be open-minded to the miraculous and the medical. Until we are reconciled in person to the living God, we ought to stay away from expectations at the ends of the spectrum.

1. Solutions to broken spirits begin with solutions to broken bodies

Start by meeting the physical, and you open the door to the spiritual. That’s what Jesus did, performing physical miracles, and feeding the crowds while preaching the spiritual truth of his gospel. Can’t a loving, good God like Him work in the current age through the grace of medical advancements?

Far be it from the church, the hands and feet of Jesus, to keep ignoring the physical needs of the church and the world. Physical, in case you didn’t know, is the basis of our mental diseases. God’s kingdom can still be proclaimed through a cup of water for those who thirst, clothing for the naked, and medication for the sick.

Maybe we are missing the miracles because we’re dismissing the physical laws God has already established. The brain needs to be treated like the physical organ that it is. For so long the church has dismissed the sound, proven prudence of psychiatry.

2. Pray for a spiritual awakening and discernment from confusion and lies

My prayer for the church is that we awake from our spiritual slumber and access the power in the living God by exercising our faith in showing up with physical means. Then we may be able to discern the difference between spiritual warfare and medically necessary modes of treatment.

3. Obey God’s provision and leading in his church through his Holy Spirit

We are hungry, and God is ready and waiting to fill our hungry souls. Let’s provide the fish and loaves. Let God multiply those tangible blessings and flex his miracle-working muscles.

May we be broken and humbled to hear from the voice of Truth, stop turning a blind eye, and apply the antidotes God reveals.

In love,

A formerly sick sister to her weary sisters and brothers in Christ

“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand” Philippians 4:5