The depression rate worldwide is on a continual rise and Christians are not immune. With multiple headlines of pastors who died by suicide throughout the United States, The Christian Post decided to reach out to ministers to talk about how they combat their darkest moments.
Throughout the years, several popular Christians have been vocal about their battles with depression and anxiety, from Charles Spurgeon to Perry Noble, and artists Mandisa and Lecrae.
Just last year, the suicide of Inland Hills Pastor Andrew Stoecklein shook the American Church after he admitted he was dealing with depression. An alarming number of pastors and Christian leaders have taken their own lives in the last five years.
Despite the increasing notice of depression and suicide nationally, the resources to help people in the church struggling with these thoughts or feelings are scarce.
According to the World Health Organization, depression at its worst leads to suicide and it affects 300 million people worldwide. It’s estimated that 15 percent of people will experience depression at some point in their adult lives.
A 2019 survey shows a diverse mix of countries with the highest suicide rates. Among the top four are: Lithuania, Russia, Guyana, and South Korea. The U.S. is No. 27 on the list. More people reportedly die of suicide than homicide in America.
Among young adults, the suicide rate for people 18 to 19 years old is up 56% from 2008-17. Depression among 20- to 21-year-olds doubled between 2009-17, and anxiety and hopelessness among 18- to 25-year-olds jumped 71% from 2008-17.
Reports show that more than 253 million prescriptions were written for antidepressants in the U.S. The percentage of those diagnosed with some form of distress jumps by 30% every year.
Christian pastors and music ministers offered advice and practical tools they use to combat the widespread outbreak of depression and anxiety.
Dealing with depression
Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, California, and author of the new book, The Way of The Warrior: An Ancient Path to Inner Peace, says firstly people need to realize that depression would be impossible if the one struggling couldn't imagine something greater.
“A huge part of the reason that we're depressed is actually because we can imagine a better life, a better self, a better world. What I tell people is, 'what happens when we get depressed is we give up on believing that we can step into the life that God has for us,'” McManus shared with The Christian Post.
The pastor explained that subtle lies try and consume individuals to the point that they become depressed because of the belief that the present moment is a “permanent moment.” It brings to mind the testimonies of all 29 people who survived jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in hopes of self-destruction — they admitted that they regretted their decision as soon as they jumped.
"I have had to remind myself so many times what I'm feeling right now, what I'm going through right now, it's temporary, that there is a way out, there's a way forward and it's going to get better,” McManus said of his own efforts.
It isn't about changing one's circumstances but rather changing one's perspective because all people have the choice to engage with depression or oppose it.
"As hard as it is, one of the first steps to getting past depression is gratitude. Because when you're grateful you actually begin to see the good all around you. When you're grateful, you see the beautiful and it actually fills you with hope,” he added.
“When you're ungrateful, all you see is everything that's going wrong. And no matter how much someone does for you, it's never enough because when you're ungrateful your soul is like a black hole — it consumes all the light and only leaves darkness.”
Legendary contemporary Christian artist Steven Cutis Chapman knows all too well what suffering from depression is like. The singer lost his youngest daughter, Maria Sue Chapman, in a tragic car incident in front of their family home in 2008. And along with having to face the grief of it all, his wife, Mary Beth, has battled “chronic depression” for years and continues to struggle.
The Grammy Award-winning musician agrees that Christians should apply spiritual remedies and natural ones.
"If you're battling with that, just like you would be battling with cancer or with diabetes or with any other illness, you pray for those, you pray the same. But there's some stigma that says, 'mental illness, you just need to pull yourself up and pray and trust God more.' I think just being truthful about the reality that we need a good therapist, we need a good psychiatrist, all of that,” Chapman told CP in a recent interview in which he also discussed his new album, Deeper Roots.
"God's a God of chemistry as much as He's a God of anything else. So medicine that can help people is important. I think all of those things are just important for us to address,” he said.
Bethel Music’s Amanda Lindsey Cook said she was able to find some relief for her life-long battle with anxiety, depression and self-confidence when she took some time away in a secluded cabin in the woods.
“I think in our information age and the culture that we have, where we have access to everything at our fingertips, it's really hard to scale down and to pare down to the bare necessities,” she lamented. “For me, it continues. It's not like one day you get there, and then you're like, 'I've arrived.' There's no such thing.”
In this silent season, Cook recorded her new album, House on a Hill.
“For me, it was one of necessity, I had to go quiet. I needed space, I needed to think my own thoughts for a bit. I needed to find out what I actually thought about some things, what I believed about some things,” Cook said of her recent experience. “I needed to let things rise to the surface, which is what happens in silence, things tend to just arise in us.”
The young minister noted that people tend to run from the pain and hurt in their lives.
“The tendency can be to think that agitation is a problem. So we feed ourselves with the distraction, something different, something that takes our mind off of that thing that's arising. But it will just keep coming back around because it's actually part of healing; it's trying to heal itself.”
It’s important to note that while Cook took her sabbatical, she did have a strong support group of friends that she confided in and even created her new music with.
Pastor Ben Courson, who recently authored the book Optimisfits, stressed the importance of relationships.
“It is definitely easy for leaders to get lonely and withdraw. But it’s germane to our joy that we don’t retreat into ourselves,” the founder of Hope Generation said. “To safeguard against depression, it is imperative that we surround ourselves with friends. The motto of my life right now is: ‘adventures with God, adventures with squad.’ That’s the theme of Optimisfits. I know it’s easier to isolate than to infiltrate.”
Courson’s book was birthed out of his desire to rebel against hopelessness. He himself battled debilitating depression and even thought about suicide.
“We need leaders who are happy warriors, who fight for what we don’t feel, count it all joy, enterprise on an adventure of hope, and show the world that fun is fundamental!” he declared.
Authenticity is also fundamental to being free from oppression, Courson said.
“It’s important to be real. As an artist once said, ‘I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.’ I want to be who I am, live what I believe, and be a person of conviction rather than convenience."
“Fun side note: the word BELIEF comes from the Germanic origins meaning ‘BY LIFE.’ In other words, if we don’t show what we believe by the way we live our life, our minds will be in conflict rather than holistic. Honesty and authenticity is the pathway to peace.”
The importance of having a support system was also highlighted by Reach Records hip-hop artist and ministry leader KB.
"One thing I’ll say is that I have a good pastor in my life, someone who I submit to. He has authority, and what he says to me matters," KB said while on the 2019 Unashamed Tour.
"It's not like a dictatorship, but I seriously consider every bit of counsel that he sends my way and I'm honest with him so I'm not asking him to counsel a version of myself that doesn't exist because I'm lying about where I am, and what I'm doing. I try to be open and honest about where I am and then allow him to speak in [to my life],” KB said about one of the ways he safeguards his own sanity.
The emcee stressed that being surrounded by good friends is an important dynamic in staying emotionally healthy.
“I'm using that word 'friends' synonymously with other disciples of Christ who are also walking and strengthening my arm in the battle,” KB maintained.
“Those are two things that have helped me not to lose my mind, that have helped me not to jump off the deep end. I guess it may appear to folks that I'm just strong or something but that's not it, I just got leaders around me and also friends.”
What could be causing the increase of depression and suicide?
Depression is running rampant in Gen Z and Gen Y with people dying by suicide once every 40 seconds. Courson believes there’s one major contributor as to why there are “123 suicides per day” in the U.S.
“The data show this is partially due to social media," Courson said. "When we compare our behind the scenes with other people’s highlight reels and do so at unfair time intervals. We get swept up in a whirl of illusions. All that comparison steals our joy.”
The cure to social media grief is to “scroll less and live more,” he advised, without worrying about what others online are doing.
“When it comes to social media it would do us well to take it with a grain of salt and not get so worked up about it. We should take a whole lot more things a whole lot less seriously. After all, angels can fly because they take themselves lightly,” he quipped.
McManus echoed Courson and pointed to the pressure for young people to feel like they have to be perfect because mistakes now have the potential to go viral and ruin someone's life.
Another factor leading to being overwhelmed and anxious is the amount of information that people have access to, McManus suggested.
"I think the human spirit, our psychological construction, we're not really prepared to take endless amounts of the psychological barrage that we now have through massive information, social media,” he said. “I think you have 12 year olds who are handling the emotional weight that full-blown adults would never have experienced 100 years ago.
"The level of trauma and challenge and uncertainty is weighing so hard on our generation, on our culture, that 8 year olds are having to take on the emotional weight of things that you wouldn't even know if you were president.”
He maintained that the average American today has more information than a president did just 50 or 100 years ago.
"We're more aware of what's going on all over the world than any world leader during World War II. This is what children are dealing with, this is what 22 year olds are dealing with,” he lamented.
What can the church do to help?
Chapman believes people of faith have to get rid of the idea that depression is a “season” that people get over.
“That language sometimes sets us up as Christians to say, 'I better not talk about it until I have the victory.' And in the process, so many people are just being devastated by [depression].”
The popular singer/songwriter referenced poet and hymnodist William Cowper who wrote, “God moves in mysterious ways” and still suffered greatly.
"So many of these great people of the faith battled depression deeply, Cowper tried to take his life on several occasions but we don't hear those stories or at least I didn't grow up hearing those because you sing about the victory,” Chapman noted. “That sets us up, especially in the church, to not want to address mental illness because certainly, ‘you just need to pray more and be a better Christian.’ And well, from experience in my life, and my wife, and our journey, that's not God's heart for us to address it that way.”
He went on to mention the death of Pastor Rick and Kay Warren’s son to suicide in 2013. The Saddleback Church leaders lost their 27-year-old son due to his struggles with mental illness.
"It is a reality that in the church, if anybody ought to be being honest about it, and say, 'hey, yes, we pray, and we have to pray and trust God ultimately, but you realize that mental illness and the impact of that is so real and we need to be more and more honest about it. Look, we need to talk about it, we need to take the stigma away, as so many people feel in the church, especially,” Chapman insisted.
To those who have felt let down or misunderstood by the church, Courson wants them to know he has been there also, along with many of the world’s greats.
“Did you know Vincent Van Gogh was a preacher in a Belgian mining town? But the elders fired him because he gave away his possessions to the poor coal miners and lived homeless like Jesus,” Courson shared. “He slept in a haystack behind a baker’s house and would show up to preach with hay sticking out of his clothes and smelling like bread. So the board of elders let him go.”
Van Gogh would go on to become one of the most influential painters in Western history. The preacher said the popular painting “A Starry Night” features a church without the lights — “dark” because it turned its back on the artist.
“And yet, he gave billions a glimpse of God’s glory with his swirling stars and post-impressionist brilliance,” Courson said of the troubled painter who battled depression for the remainder of his life and is believed to have committed suicide.
“When churches don’t get you or close the door on you, God has not forgotten about you and like Vincent, He will use you to reach the disenfranchised,” Courson emphasized. “Our rejection is God’s protection.”
The Optimisfits (optimistic misfits) author hopes his book would help ignite a generation to a “fierce rebellion against hopelessness.”
“People say, ‘learn to live with depression.’ No thank you. We are called to defeat depression! We are called to follow our dreams, never present an image to the world that’s not who we are, grab hold of the promises of God, and embark on funventures! It is high time for the joyful soldiers to rise up against the despair wracking our culture, and to turn our mope generation into a hope generation!” Courson concluded.
If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or thoughts of suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or get Christian resources at cru.org or theexitmovie.com.
