In her book Darkness Is My Only Companion (Brazos Press, 2015), Kathyrn Greene-McCreight says religious platitudes offer little in the way of help to those who live with mental health challenges. In fact, such trite advice might actually cause a depressed person more hurt. She advises would-be helpers to keep the clichés to themselves.
Those Christians who have not faced the ravages of mental illness should not be quick with advice to those who do suffer. Platitudes such as “Pray harder,” “Let Jesus in,” or even “Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you,” (1 Pet 5:7), which of course are all sage pieces of advice in and of themselves, may only make the depressive person hurt more.
Why would encouraging a depressed person to trust God or pray more cause hurt? Because of the nature of depression, says Greene-McCreight.
[D]epression is not just sadness or sorrow. Depression is not just negative thinking. Depression is not just being “down.” It is being cast to the very end of your tether and, quite frankly, feeling as though you are being dropped…While God certainly can pick up the pieces and put them together in a new way, this can happen only if the depressed brain makes it through an episode to see again life among the living. At the time of free fall such a possibility seems absolutely unimaginable.
Greene-McCreight acknowledges this might be difficult to grasp for those who’ve never experienced it. But she says they “must try to accept that this is the case, even if they cannot understand it.”
Did you know that Charles Spurgeon, the great Bristish preacher, lived with depression for much of his life? Read about what he said was the unkindest thing to say to a depressed person.
