Any kind of illness can evoke questions about “Why has God allowed this?” but mental illness cuts to the heart of our experience of being human in God’s world.
One of the real challenges for people struggling with their mental health is that its easy to see a gulf between the medical information offered in mainstream mental health services and the diversity of material available, some good and some bad, in the world of Christian spirituality and faith.
Some people see psychiatry as atheistic and unsympathetic to religious perspectives and, equallly, many churches are not well informed about mental health. As a result, some Christians can have concerns about how compatible the medication or psychological therapies that they are offered within the NHS are with their Christian worldview.
Depression or anxiety can easily be (mistakenly) attributed to lack of faith (whether by the person concerned, or by others in their church) or even to demonic activity.
The hearing of voices, or obsessional patterns of thought, can be difficult to distinguish from the voice of God, on the one hand, or the voice of the devil on the other.
Fortunately, mental health professionals are increasingly aware of the importance of spirituality and faith in assessment, treatment and recovery, and there are some good generic resources available, for example from the Royal College of Psychiatrists: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/treatments-and-wellbeing/spirituality-and-mental-health
Christian resources that are now available include a recently published book by Chris Cook, Isabelle Hamley & John Swinton: https://library.spckpublishing.co.uk/id005675751/Struggling-with-God which explores mental health in the light of Christian spirituality.
Chris has also written a series of reflections on mental health which offer short biblically based meditations on such things as loneliness, worry, hearing voices, and forgiveness. Each one is linked to a “have a go” spiritual practice developed by Ruth Rice (from Renew Wellbeing): https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/10961mental-health-reflections_web.pdf
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