It surprises many people to hear that depression is common among Christian populations. This may lead them to ask questions like, “Well what is the point of faith if you are still going to be depressed? What causes depression in Christians?” Good question.
Religion is not an anti-depressant. While it does give meaning to suffering and provides the standards of behavior that lead to peace, it cannot magically cure depression. Religion is not a magic pill that makes everyone’s problems go away. While it is common for religion to be depicted that way, there is still work that must be done on an individual basis. And this is what most people do not want to hear. They want religion to be the one-size-fits-all cure for every negative emotion and malady known to man. While that is a noble desire, they want this for the wrong reasons. They want religion to remove their need to work on themselves and remove the burden they have to work through their own problems. They approach religion with a socialist mindset, expecting to receive without first having to give.
Still, even with all the benefits of Christianity, you may be wondering why Christians can be depressed.
What causes depression in Christians? How can people with the hope of salvation be tormented in mind? This is no exhaustive list but let us look at a few common reasons.
I – Chemical Depression.
I think these are generally the minority of depression cases, but many people have chemical imbalances that require medicine to be treated. While I always admire people, who at first try to manage their depression through non-medical means, for a small percentage of the population this simply will not work. Unless they are willing to take the time to identify each hormone and neurotransmitter that may be responsible for their depression and then find out how to increase them naturally and repeat that for a period of months, they likely will remain the same and their depression will be unchanged. It is hard to tease out which hormones can be responsible for depression.
One of the big ones is serotonin. Almost every hormone has multiple jobs and one of the jobs of serotonin is mood regulation. Many of the common anti-depressants you may have heard of impact serotonin in some way. Selective-Serotonin reuptake Inhibitors, known as SSRIs, stop the body from reabsorbing serotonin before it has had its full chemical effect on the mood. Another class of drug is the Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors, or SNRIs, which act in a similar way but also impact the uptake rate of norepinephrine, which is a chemical cousin to adrenaline.
The point of that was not to drown in details of drugs but rather to identify one of the big hormones/neurotransmitters responsible for depression.
Given that we know serotonin can play a role in depression, perhaps we can find a way to increase serotonin without the use of these drugs, which are overprescribed and often have annoying side effects.
The Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience in an article entitled “How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs” identified four possibilities: Meditation, bright light exposure, exercise, and a diet with increased tryptophan content. You can glance through the paper yourself for more details. But if you think you are low in serotonin, try these interventions first before moving on to more powerful alternatives.
Jordan Peterson also notes in his first rule for life that standing up straight with your shoulders back naturally produces serotonin.
Serotonin is not the only hormone involved in chemical depression, but it certainly is an important one.
II – Expectations
The world expects Christians to be happy, floaty, perfect human beings. The second Christians do not match the world’s idea of them, they are ridiculed. “I thought you guys were supposed to feel, act and think in X, Y, Z ways. Wow, you guys sure are a bunch of fakes”. There is no tolerance in this world for Christian people even from those who demand tolerance for themselves. Especially not when it comes to mental health.
If word gets out that a significant percentage of your local church is taking some sort of mind-altering drug to manage depression, the secular culture will have a field day with it.
Even in the church, there is no safety (as we will mention more in the next section). Christians expect their fellow Christians to be strong and powerful. Men expect other men to be masculine and never struggle with mental challenges. While it is noble to aspire to that level of extreme mental control and to hold high expectations, this comes at a cost. Now if a man does not stack up to the expectations of others, he is isolated and thinks he cannot even seek help from other men. Men should be inspiring one another to get there instead of expecting perfection from the womb.
Men must be forged from fire and steel over a period of many years.
We should not expect them to be perfected the moment they begin to take their first steps on the earth.
With heavy expectation comes two possible responses: the first is that a person lives up to the standard and succeeds. The second is that a person completely rejects the standard and everyone who imposed expectation on him. This may not happen instantly; it could happen over a period of years. Many Christians hold a shaky faith for years only to be crushed by some outside event later in life. This causes them to reject the faith and to do so with indignation.
High standards are good, high expectations are less good. A standard shows us what we should stive for while expectations tell us to get there or suffer the consequences. What cause depression in Christians? Unrealistic expectations.
III – Isolationism
Many Christians feel the need to hide this struggle. Depression is right up there with pornography in regards to the size of the stigma associated with it. Men feel that they cannot talk to other men about depression. Jim Kwik has noted this stigma as well and stated the following about mental health, this is my paraphrasing of his words: “It is okay to say that your knee or arm is hurt. But there is much less social support and acceptance if you say that your soul or mind is hurt”. He is absolutely right. There is very little support for “fake diseases” like depression and anxiety. So, men resort to suffering alone.
There is an even greater stigma when it comes to men being depressed. Again, men are expected to be impervious to all outside forces and have unbreakable wills. I would love if that were true for every man, but it is not. It is part of the reason Spartan Christianity exists, to provide tools and resources for men whose religious upbringing failed to make them the men they need to be in today’s world. Men should aim to have iron minds and be immune to depression and every struggle, but it will not happen instantly, and it will not be a fun process.
What causes depression in Christians? Isolation. Feeling like they are the only ones with their struggle.
IV – Helplessness
The majority of religion provides no tools for men to create themselves beyond “just have faith and pray”. Another chip off the religious socialism block.
Religion expects men to have iron wills but does not give them the tools with which to create those wills. You cannot treat every single mental, physical, or spiritual impairment with faith. There is still work that must be done on the part of the individual to create his own strength through the power of his thoughts. His church rarely gives him direction in that work, so he floats aimlessly on the waves of life and fails to improve himself. He is the same helpless, depressed man year after year. What causes depression in Christians? Helplessness. An attitude that is wrongfully encouraged by modern religion.
