One of my favorite topics ever is faith and mental health. What goes along with that? The church and mental health. I am usually really careful when I talk about it for fear of making people mad but I decided to finally address it.
The church does not get mental health right most of the time. A lot of the time there is huge stigmas around it in the church. The church says things like “just pray the anxiety away”, “anxiety is just lack of faith”, “if you had more faith you wouldn’t be depressed”, etc.
None of that is true for chronic and disordered mental health. Situtational yes it’s a little more true but for someone like me those phrases are dangerous. Those phrases add to the stigma of mental health in faith. It lends leverage to the idea that you can’t be a christian and battle with mental health and that is not true. 4 in 4 people have mental health. 1 in 4 of those people have a mental health disorder.
Mental health disorders plague the world. When someone is new to faith or maybe not in faith but visiting a church and on the fence about accepting Christ and hear that, that can push them away. That can make them think that they are too broken to be a Christ follow. It can make them think Christ would never love them because they have anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc. This is not true. If that was true then I’d be screwed.
Praying doesn’t always take away your chronic anxiety. Reading your bible does not always take away that dark depression. Worshiping won’t always take the BPD or bipolar mood swings away. The church tries to say this and it is not true.
I am not saying those things won’t help because they will. I got angry/frustrated with something at work the other day. I prayed and majority of my frustration/anger wwas taken away the minute I was honest with God. Does that always happen? No. But I will say praying makes me feel better. I get a sense of comfort even if my anxiety doesn’t get taken away.
The church doesn’t understand mental health unless it is led by someone who has battled first hand or knows someone who has battled with mental health. When this happens, there is less stigma within the sermons preached that touch on mental health.
As someone with mental health disorders, I truthfully get kinda frustrated when the church talks about mental health in ways that I know could push people with mental health disorders away. I get frustrated because when I was younger and heard some of this, I felt like a burden to the church. I felt like I didn’t belong there because I struggled with anxiety and depression. This is one of the reasons I partly walked away from my faith in 2018.
The stigma in the church is something that pushes people away. It makes people feel like burdens and like they shouldn’t be there. It makes people feel like there really is no hope for them or that they are not a good enough christian because they struggle. This can make them feel like they shouldn’t be there.
The church is supposed to be a place for the broken. It’s supposed to be a place for people to go to and get hope. It’s supposed to be a place where people feel they can go for support and that they are not alone.
Mental health is not talked about in the right way enough in the church. It’s not talked about in ways that make people feel like they belong. The leaders most of the time don’t talk about it. Sometimes even the counselors in the church have similar stigmas.
I think there needs to be a change. I think more people need to be trained on what mental health actually looks like and not what the world says it looks like. Sometimes you may not even know someone is struggling and you say the wrong thing and you cause them to stumble. We are called to not cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble yet the stigma in the church can definitely cause people to stumble and fall.
I feel really strongly about this because I have witnessed it first hand. To some people, it’s a sin to struggle with mental health and that is not true but sometimes that’s what it feels like these churches are saying.
Struggling with an anxiety disorder is not a sin. Struggling with depression is not a sin. Struggling with a mental health disorder is not a sin. The church needs to stop implying that is it or if they are talking about it in a situational sense, they need to say that they mean situational anxiety, depression, etc.
The church needs to do better when it comes to mental health. And if they need help doing that, they need to reach out to people who truly struggle with mental health to see real life with it.
And just a reminder, anxiety disorders do not mean you have a lack of faith.
Hold onto hope and stay strong.
Madison Rae <3
Comentários