Christians and Depression

I've been thinking about doing a post like this for a while but a recent post by Ace and a furore over someone attributing depression to a lack of salvation have spurred me on.

I alluded in my testimony to a time when I was very unhappy but in that post I did not go into any further detail. In recent weeks however I have felt like God has been "prodding" me to write more about it and I hope that in doing so I can be a help to others.

Although I do have happy memories of times during my childhood, I would not say that overall I had a happy child. Earlier on it was not so bad but gradually over time the good bits got fewer and farther between and the bad bits became worse and merged into one another.

This was partly caused by circumstances in my life and partly by the way I dealt with it. Or didn't.

I had no outward way of expressing my feelings so I turned inward. I hated myself and started to believe the things I was told about myself by others. I was at the bottom of a miry pit. From about age thirteen I started to harm myself. I know people aften view this as an attention seeking activity but in my case it was not. I think it was partly control and partly that I hated myself and it was the only way I could relieve any anger or hurt I felt. It got to the point that it was a bit like an addiction - if anything in the least bit stressful happened then I "needed" to cut myself.

I actually had no idea that anyone else did the same thing until I was seventeen and a spate of articles came out in teen magazines I read and there was a documentary on the telly. It almost seems unbelievable now to think that I never thought of it but I was in such a pit that the idea never occured to me. Bizzarely, finding out that it was much more common than I realised was what first made me want to stop. (Having said that, Marya Hornbacher switched from bulimia to anorexia when she discovered that many of her classmates were bulimic so maybe my response was not so unusual.)

Although I kept trying to stop it was very hard. Eventually I succeeded by giving it up for lent. That may sound silly but it is how I managed to do it. I was not a Christian at the time and it is the only time I have ever given something up for lent but the fact that I had promised to God that I would do it was what really gave me the determination to succeed. (In England it is fairly common for people who are not Christians to give things up for lent: I think it stems from nominal Anglicanism.)

Going to university was a turning point for me. This was for two reasons the chief one being that I became a Christian. The second reason was that I was away from home for half of the year. Becoming a Christian did make a difference but it did not magic away all the problems or make me able to breeze merrily though life without being troubled by them. In some ways the freedom of being away from home made the times when I was back worse. I used to be ill at the end of every term. One time I lost my voice, another time I got flu, I had a chest infection, blepharitis. Each time it was something different.

In my second year I met someone who I would count as my first "real" friend. I had had "friends" before but I had never really trusted anyone and always held back. Through this friend God helped me to learn to trust people.


More than once she let me visit her during the holidays so that I could get away from home. In some ways this made things harder because I got to see what I didn't have. There is a song by the band "James" called "Sit Down" which expressed much of what I felt at that time (with the notable exception of the line, "Hope that God exists"). Without God and the friendship of other Christians I don't think I would have coped with that time. In some ways it was better than what went before (such as the fact I was a Christian and I had real friends) but in others it was worse (such as the constant switching between two totally contrasting worlds.

Although I did successfully stop cutting myself I did have two brief relapses - one before I became a Christian and one afterwards. This did not make me not a Christian. In fact if I had not become a Christian I am sure there would have been many more relapses. I had many Bible verses on my wall some of which particularly helped me in my struggles:




After university I did not have a job so I went back "home". I managed to get a summer job but of course that was only temporary. My church had a new minister who was gradually driving everyone away with his attitude so I was trying to find a new church within walking distance which was hard. My parents made it very difficult for me to go anywhere and were very difficult about me visiting new churches. I also had to go food shopping with my mum on a Sunday which I thought was wrong.

I am sure that God had a purpose in all my troubles just as he has a purpose in all things. During this particular time I spent a great deal of time praying. Maybe it was God's way of bringing me closer to him. I found Psalm 25 particularly helpful.

One day I was walking home from the library. I can remember thinking about how that day was a relatively good day. As I walked I was trying very hard not to burst into tears. It suddenly hit me: There I was walking along trying my hardest not to burst into tears in public and I thought that was a good day! Living as a Christian and living in my parents home were just incompatible so I had to make the choice.

I went back to my old university town and applied for a rental flat. I then found a job through an agency which gave me an excuse for leaving. In my final year I had been attending two churches - the first I had been to all the way through and the second I started attending in my final year. When I had left my last service at the second church before going home, I had not really felt like I would never see those people again. When I returned to that church I felt like I was finally home.

I am no longer in a pit because God chose to take me out of it. For me he worked through the situations I was in but for others it may be different. I think that I find it easier to deal with the everyday ups and downs of life because of my trials and am thankful for that.

"Praise the LORD of hosts: for the LORD is good; for his mercy endureth for ever"

Jeremiah 33:11


Useful links:
Dealing with Depression Responsibly by Shannon