Its Mental Health awareness week, so here's another post! There's many problems with the term 'Mental Health', not to mention how its used differently between the UK and USA. One particular problem is that once you no longer exhibit the symptoms necessary for a mental health diagnosis, its as if you're completely fine now. This leads to two similar problems:
1) Those who don't have an official mental health diagnosis can think they're ok.
But we all need renewing of the mind (Rom 12:1-2). We all have sinful hearts (Jer 17:9). We all have unbelief in God's goodness throughout the day. So, if we don't have an official diagnosis we can feel like 'I'm ok' when really our hearts (where our mental comes from) need some serious work on them. If you go through our worksheet here, you can see how even without mental health issues, our assessments of people and situations can be way off.
2) Those who no longer present symptoms can think they're now ok.
The doctors might say you're fine now, but you might still have stuff to work through. For example,
I found that once I no longer had PTSD symptoms, I still had to mourn through past abuse, and still needed renewing of the mind in key areas. I might no longer respond with PTSD symptoms to certain triggers, but I still respond in a way that need's God's help.
