God’s Mental Health Prescription

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!…Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Philippians 4:4,6

Rejoice! Be anxious for nothing.

Do these sound like impossible commands? After all, anxiety and sadness are natural automatic responses to certain situations in life. So I don’t think God is saying it’s wrong to feel these emotions. I think He’s saying we don’t have to let them control us. Yet even that can be difficult. Even for good Christians.

Even good Christians struggle with anxiety and depression.

In the past, the standard Christian response to mental health issues was along these lines:

you need to pray more
you should have more faith
focus on serving God and others and your depression will go away

Nowadays mental healthcare has become more normalized. I’m glad that we have medications that can help, and that Christians are more willing to speak about the proper role that medication and counseling can play in dealing with depression and anxiety.

So if you suffer from any kind of mental health challenge, if you take an antidepressant, if you talk to a therapist every week, I honor your efforts to deal with your situation and to improve your quality of life.

But of course antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines aren’t actually “happy pills” that produce joy. For that, you’ll probably also need to do things like:

pray more
increase your faith
focus on serving God and others

If there is one downside to the trend of normalizing mental healthcare, it’s that, in fact, sometimes better habits and deeper faith are needed, and yet now perhaps we feel reluctant to point people to these things. Often our words meant to help sound like a guilt trip to those who are taking medicine or going to therapy.

I look at it this way. Sometimes depression and anxiety are caused by the inability to produce or regulate certain hormones. Medicine would seem to make a lot of sense in such a case. Where people were taught bad coping skills in their youth (or none at all), learning such skills through therapy makes sense. And sometimes depression is caused by acute circumstances. Someone who has recently suffered a tragic loss or is facing something very frightening might need, at least temporarily, something to help them deal with the extreme emotions. And of course it’s possible that a person could be facing any combination of such factors.

But there is another category of people out there who are depressed simply because they do not know God. As my husband says, many people are craving something and they don’t know what it is. This reminds me of the God-shaped hole that we sometimes hear about (see my article here). And while medicine and therapy might help these folks to a point, what they need most of all is God. If we want to help them find joy, we should encourage them to:

start praying
seek faith which comes by hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17)
focus on serving God and others

We must share the gospel of hope with the hopeless!

When people learn about the God who created them, they begin to understand their purpose in being on planet earth, and joy becomes possible. They may still suffer from depression. They may still have bouts of anxiety. They may still need extra help. But that help should be in addition to the spiritual tools that God has provided, including prayer, the promises of faith, and the joy of serving others.

Whether you’re a Christian or not, it’s not wrong to feel sad or anxious, and there’s no shame in seeking help. Thankfully antidepressants and counseling are losing their stigma. But they can only do so much. Learning to rejoice and be anxious for nothing IS a tall order. To reach such a lofty goal we also need the gospel. We need the peace “which surpasses all understanding,” (Philippians 4:7). We need God.

He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Isaiah 53:3a

I will turn their mourning to joy,
Will comfort them,
And make them rejoice rather than sorrow.
Jeremiah 31:13b

Dear God, we praise You as the God of all compassion and hope! And we pray for Your special blessing upon those who are deeply hurting, whatever the cause. We thank You for all of the things You have provided, both spiritual and physical, for dealing with painful emotions. May we always include the comfort of prayer and holy scripture as we look for solutions for ourselves, and in offering hope to a world steeped in sorrow. We pray in the name of the Man of Sorrows, Jesus Christ, Amen.

by Christie Cole Atkins

My friend, Matthew Bassford, died of ALS in October of 2023. Between his diagnosis and his passing, he wrote an excellent article based on his experience with antidepressants. You can find it here.