Christians Can Suffer From Depression! Having Depression Doesn't Make You A Bad Person, or Mean You Are Bad!

Using God and Spirituality to Help Cope With Mental Illness is very wise. There's no way hardly you are going to survive the various attacks of this illness unless you arm yourself with the truth and light and hope.

Jesus conquered the world, He tells us. And so can we conquer this with His help. Without Him I am nothing and can do nothing. Prayer is communication with God. God saves my life everyday; When I pray he takes dark clouds away. He distills the darkness with His natural supreme light putting all fear to flight by the power of His Heavenly might, no wrongness in His sight.

My personal relationship with Christ has helped me through the many years. I've wanted to die many times but I don't believe in suicide and hanging on through prayer has helped. You may not believe in prayer but if you do, you know it helps.

I must pray when tempted or when in pain. I must harness myself to the heart of Jesus and ask for mercy as Job and others did in the Bible. Mental pain can be a very scary thing of which you know by now. Negative and depressing thoughts...These are things no one wants and even in church we pray, "Lord protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our savior Jesus Christ."

Distraction- one way to cope

When I think of others besides myself, I forget my problems. It could be helping an elderly relative, volunteering, but also very effective to me is imagining what Jesus went through on the cross, that my difficulty is nothing compared to what His was.....Lately in my life I find that if I "pray without ceasing" (what does this mean?) things go better for me. What I mean is I will pray ahead of time for things to go well, I will thank God for things that went well and Praise Jesus, I will ask in the moment and also pray for others. It takes a while to get into the habit of praying a lot, which is basically talking to God intimately as a friend whenever we want. Also reading the Psalms helps.

Right now I'm reading "The Battlefield of the Mind" which is a spiritual book which helps you think positive written by Joyce Meyers. It is the most inspirational or rather helpful book besides the bible for me right now. Joyce uses passages from the Bible and personal experience to help us replace negative thoughts with positive and pray against the devil who puts those thoughts in your heads.

I hope this helped a little.

Just Because You Believe in God, does not mean he will cure you of mental illness, or that you are unworthy!

How many times, have well meaning friends of mine, who are Bible believers and wonderful, helpful, supportive Christians, say to me, "If you just pray more, and trust God..."

I will say, that it really does help to do that, but if you're still experiencing depression or problem, it could be a way God is using to strenghten you- by you overcoming it you will be stronger.

Let me say, mental illnesses, like bipolar, schzophrenia, depression can be a physical lack of serotonin or dopamine brain chemicals which affect our mood and our mind or even a lack of good nutrition.

You would not tell someone with cancer to stop taking their treatment, expecting God to cure them? No, God does not cure EVERYONE, ALL the Time. But yes, I'm sure He does sometimes.

Point is, God can be an incredible part of our cure, an incredible part of hope, being uplifted, and actual grace pouring from Heaven. Yes, praying and reading the Bible, and trusting God are key in any struggle, but it may not totally fix things- perhaps the time is not right, yet.

Sick people need medicine.

This is why, I don't tell people to stop taking medication. Telling someone to stop taking medication because you believe they don't need it because they are supposed to be Saved, is a bad idea!

We as humans, we are not islands. We need a lot of people to keep us happy...most of us...we need family, friends, social workers, etc. The more support the better, AA meetings, divorce meetings, therapy, etc.

God helps those who help themselves. Whatever our issues/problems are, be it relationship, sick family, mental illness, physical illness, we need to take responsibility, believe in ourselves, and work on a solution. God will help us, but we need to help ourselves too.

So, if you have depression, or anxiety, and people are telling you to "just get over it", know that you can, but it may take time and hard work!