Christian Response to Mental Illness: Mutual Care in the Body of Christ

The Christian response to mental illness is one of the great tragedies ravaging the church today. This tragedy began with the rise of the medical model of mental illness. The medical model used in the world of medicine has been hopelessly hijacked by those in the field of mental illness. The implications threaten the very foundations of psychiatry, as they depend on the medical model for mental disorders. These implications also threaten the foundations of psychotherapy and the biblical counseling movement as it follows the psychological counseling format. The very terms mental illness, mental disorder, and mental disease have become a blight to society, as they have been misunderstood, misapplied, misconstrued, and misused by many in both society and the church.