In 2023, what do mental health issues and mental illness in the church look like?

Whoever you are — poor or rich, Christian or an unbeliever, married or single, young or old — Scott Free Clinic offers our ministry services to all. That’s because every “kind” of person you could think of has needed the kind of services we provide to help them change their lives.

That includes Christians.

And that’s because Christians DO suffer from mental health issues and mental illness, like any other “kind” of people.

So what do mental health issues, and mental illness, among people in the church look like? In 2023, Scott Free Clinic has been as pressed as we’ve ever been with demands for services. The types of needs we’ve seen and ministered to just this year, among Christian people, include:

• • A mother whose life was plagued by anxiety and depression. An adult daughter struggling to care for that mother’s needs and keep her own life upright. And her sister struggling with a love-less marriage. A broken family with everyone in need.
  • A pastor’s wife struggling with her marriage but her husband wouldn’t come to counseling because he was a minister — what would people think if they knew he was seeing a counselor?! So his marriage continued to deteriorate.
  • An elder with a long track record of not listening well to his wife or showing her honor, leaving open an old wound in his wife that was festering.
  • A minister with intrusive thoughts of dangerous and criminal activity.
  • Blended families not “blending” well.
  • Couples coming out of the COVID pandemic thinking they really don’t like (or know!) each other.
  • Church leaders on the brink of divorce from very reconcilable differences.
  • Adultery and fornication among church leaders.
  • Multiple cases of family conflict.
  • Lives impaired by repeated panic attacks.
  • People struggling with their mental and spiritual health due to chronic pain.
  • Several cases of grief and loss.
  • A pervasive issue of lives being deeply disturbed by (often lifelong) patterns and habits of irrational thinking and cognitive distortions.
  • Relational/marital clashes caused directly from a lack of communication skills.
  • An elder with a long history of criminal activity in the workplace.
  • Stress, anxiety, and depression at levels that impair the activities of daily living.
  • A significant uptick in the number of people coming to us already having a diagnosis of “trauma” or PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
  • Poor fitness levels that impaired the whole of life.
  • Serious health issues that sparked mental and spiritual health issues.
  • A broad array of spiritual issues, which in turn impacted mental and even physical health.
  • Broken relationships across the board (marriages, families, friendships, within the church, in the workplace, etc.).
  • Church conflicts.
  • Church staff conflicts.
  • An array of Pastor Care (counseling specifically for vocational and bi-vocational ministers) needs.
  • Lives dramatically hampered by compulsivity.
  • Bipolar Disorder, Personality Disorder, and other disorders and mental illnesses.
  • Substance abuse/addictions by church members and church leaders.

And the list goes on.

Mental health is something we all experience every day. Mental health issues are also something every human being will experience. And some people (by the millions) suffer from a mental illness.

In spite of some persistent ignorance, mental illness is real, it isn’t a sin, and it affects Christians like it does everyone else.

Don’t let that truth cause you to lose hope, like the sad story of this fellow, told by an unidentified writer:

“While attending college, I visited a psychiatric institution with a group of students to observe various types of mental illness. I remember one man who was called ‘No Hope Carter.’ His was a tragic case. A victim of venereal disease, he was going through the final stages when the brain is affected. Before he began to lose his mind, this man was told by the doctors that there was no known cure for him. He begged for one ray of light in his darkness, but had been told that the disease would run its inevitable course and end in death. Gradually his brain deteriorated and he became more and more despondent. When I saw him in his small, barred room about 2 weeks before he died, he was pacing up and down in mental agony. His eyes stared blankly, and his face was drawn and ashen. Over and over he muttered these two forlorn and fateful words: ‘No hope! No hope!.'”

As Christians, we know that in any circumstance in life we can have hope in and through Jesus Christ. Additionally, there is a broad body of research that proves counseling can be highly effective for most mental health issues and mental illness. Key is getting the professional help needed, access to that help, and that help being made available by competent providers.

Scotty