Why Christians Don’t Talk About Mental Health Struggles

This is the first article in our new series on Mental Health. In this series, our counselors hope to call churches and Christians to re-engage with the discussion and care for mental health struggles.

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There has perhaps never been a more confusing time for Christians and church leaders to address the topic of mental health.

Corporate America and the media have whole months devoted to it. Athletes, musicians, and celebrities routinely champion acceptance for those seeking treatment. After every public tragedy, politicians grandstand about increased funding for mental health services. Pharmaceutical ads promise relief, while our own observations tell us anxiety, depression, and despair are only increasing — especially among teenagers and young adults whose lives have been reshaped by the smartphone, the pandemic years, and an always-on social media culture.

Even our political discourse increasingly assumes a mental deficiency in our opponents. Loneliness has been called an epidemic. Suicide rates remain stubbornly high. The conversation is everywhere, and yet it feels like we are no closer to actually helping people.

There is real reason for concern when it comes to mental health and our responses to it.

So where do our faith and the ministry of the church fit into the solutions?

How would Jesus have us respond to the current conversations?

We know Jesus cared deeply about all who were weary and struggling. The church needs to do the same and care deeply for those with mental health struggles.

This isn’t about saving our country or our way of life. It’s about a humble and sincere desire to meet people in their moments of grief, sadness, confusion, and rage. It’s about helping fellow sinners see how pursuing God in the midst of life’s heartaches can bring peace and stability to their souls.

Sadly, many churches and individuals have been unable to engage these conversations effectively because they’ve defaulted to inadequate and misguided approaches. For many Christians, it’s easier to sit on the sidelines than to step in. Ask yourself: how many of the mindsets below have you believed?

Here are common reasons why most Christians don’t engage those facing mental health struggles.

Simplistic Answers

Mental health struggles rarely fit into tidy categories. They involve a complicated web of behaviors, thoughts, motivations, relationships, and bodies — and the person living through them often can’t tell where one thread ends and the next begins. Modern psychology is generally good at naming patterns it observes but has struggled to explain why those patterns take root in some people and not others.

Some Christians and churches respond by collapsing every mental health struggle into a single category — usually a lack of faith, a lack of prayer, weak devotional habits, or rebellion. The implication is that a believer who is walking with God shouldn’t be struggling at all. If they are, it must be sin, doubt, or laziness.

That’s not what Scripture shows us. The Psalms are full of saints groaning under the weight of fear, grief, and darkness. Elijah collapsed under a tree and asked God to take his life. Paul described being “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.” Faithfulness and suffering are not opposites in the Bible — they often travel together.

Simplistic answers also ignore the reality that we are embodied creatures. Sleep, hormones, chronic illness, medication side effects, intense grief, and a hundred other physical realities shape how we experience our own minds. Telling a struggling believer to “just pray more” without considering any of that isn’t ministry; it’s avoidance dressed up in spiritual language.

Overly simplistic answers are inadequate, and they can be deeply hurtful to people who are already wondering whether God has forgotten them.

Scientific Answers

If mental health concerns are primarily physical and medical issues, then who are the right professionals to address them? Why should churches even try to get involved?

Most Christians don’t have medical degrees, can’t prescribe anything, and lack clinical training. Wouldn’t it be irresponsible for them to engage at all? At the same time, many counselors rightly question whether science alone can ever explain the painful and complicated stories we hear in the counseling room.

Why do some people respond to suffering with remarkable grit and resilience while others, given similar circumstances, spiral further into despair? Why do two siblings raised in the same home walk away with such different inner lives? Science can describe a great deal, but it doesn’t have adequate answers to the moral, spiritual, and relational complexities at the heart of mental health struggles.

Regardless of the medical complications, everyone benefits from a loving friend who commits to traverse lifes journey with them.  Purpose have proven more powerful than pills with most people in their mental health journey.  Responsible medical care can stabilize an unsafe story, but it can’t sustain hope, because medical care doesn’t reach the eternal soul. 

Sarcastic Answers

Some in the church mock mental health struggles outright: “ADD might as well stand for ‘Absent Dad Disorder.'” “PTSD is just another word for ‘snowflake.'” “People with depression need to toughen up.”

It may be true that previous generations endured harder physical conditions than most of us face today. But belittling all mental health struggles as the inventions of a soft generation is unkind, unhelpful, and frankly unbiblical. The sarcastic dismissals that come from many Christians imply that anyone wrestling with their mental health is just looking for an excuse — and that posture closes the door to ministry before a single conversation can begin.  

Jesus modeled for us a better way, his sarcasm was directed at the self-righteous, not the suffering.  We need to know the difference and follow his example of compassion.

Secular Answers

Some churches refuse to engage these conversations from a Christian perspective because they’re quietly convinced the faith has little to contribute. If mental health is a “public health issue” and faith is a “private matter,” the thinking goes, then the church should keep its distance and let the experts handle it.

This isn’t the same as a church that values medical care, takes the body seriously, or refers thoughtfully for proper medical care. That kind of engagement is wise. The problem here is the church that has effectively outsourced soul care — that no longer believes Scripture, prayer, the means of grace, and the body of Christ have anything substantive to say to a discouraged or anxious or grieving believer.

When the church concludes it has nothing to offer, it leaves its own people to carry the deepest questions of their lives — Why is this happening? Where is God? Am I still loved? — alone, or with only the categories the broader culture provides.

Hurting people don’t just need a diagnosis and a prescription, helpful as those can be. They need to be known. They need community. They need hope that doesn’t depend on whether tomorrow goes well. The church has unique resources for exactly that kind of care, and abandoning the conversation in the name of humility actually leaves people worse off.

Sympathetic Concerns

We need to give more than our “thoughts and prayers” to those facing mental health struggles and to those who love them.

A veneer of concern and a few sympathetic platitudes don’t add up to actual care. Real ministry to people in this kind of pain requires thicker skin, more patience, and the willingness to sit through uncomfortable conversations that don’t resolve neatly. It is far easier to murmur a prayer for relief than to walk alongside someone for the months — sometimes years — that it takes to find sturdy ground again.

Super Spiritual Beliefs

“If you just had more faith, your mental health struggles would fade away.”

Most Christians won’t say it that bluntly, but plenty believe it. In this view, mental health struggles are simply a willful rejection of biblical truth — a failure to remember God’s promises. The remedies offered are almost always spiritual disciplines: more prayer, more meditation, more church attendance, more journaling. Try harder. Believe more.

What hurting believers actually hear is, “You aren’t doing enough.” And that message, layered onto an already exhausted person, often produces deeper despair rather than relief.

Implying that anyone who struggles must have weak faith is cruel. It also ignores the long history of saints — Spurgeon, Cowper, and many others — who clung tightly to Christ precisely through their darkest seasons. Faith isn’t the absence of struggle. Sometimes faith is what’s holding the struggle together.

Satanic Beliefs

Some Christians fear that mental health struggles are primarily the result of demonic possession, oppression, or deception — and some churches teach exactly that. If pornography, addictions, anxiety, and depression are mainly the devil’s work, then the response is spiritual warfare: rebuke him, bind him, cast him out.

A simple reading of the Bible does lead us to take the demonic seriously. Satan is real, and he means harm. But Scripture also presents the Christian life as a long, ordinary pursuit of Christ — walking in truth, putting sin to death, being renewed day by day. When every struggle is reframed as a demon to be expelled, people can spend years looking for a dramatic deliverance while practical, biblically grounded help sits unused right next to them.

Security Concerns

Some churches and leaders quietly distance themselves from those with mental health struggles out of safety concerns for the broader congregation. The reality is that the vast majority of cases pose little or no safety risk at all.  Often time those with mental health struggles talk to themselves, miss social cues, or talk out of turn, this can frustrate those around them. However, the calming presence of a friend who cares, accepts them, and speaks corrective truth in both gentle and firm ways, is the only proven path to learning.  

What’s worse, disengagement and alienation are themselves often stressors for the kinds of behaviors churches fear most. Simple, sustained friendship and pastoral concern are some of the most effective preventative measures available to us. People who feel known and loved rarely act in destructive ways. The church that pulls back in the name of safety often creates the very isolation that puts people at greater risk. Don’t abandon those with mental health struggles for safety reasons, help them stabilize leading to safety. Caring leadership is one of the critical factors for healing.

Conclusion

The church is capable of better responses than the eight excuses above.

In this series, we hope to call churches and Christians to re-engage with the discussion and care for mental health. With a heart of compassion and sound theology as our guide, the church is a critical asset — and good science can be a real ally — in ministering to those who are struggling. We must not treat mental health struggles the same as our culture views them, we can give those who suffer hope, without minimizing either their sin or suffering.

These conversations are too important, and the people in our pews are too precious, for us to keep sitting on the sidelines.